#file under: faces: stanley

[knotfodder]

name: Stanley Pines nicknames: Stan dob. age: June 15 (25-45) gender: Male pronouns: (he/him/his) secondary gender: Omega occupation: entrepreneur species: human (unless..?) younger fc: Tyler Hoechlin older fc: Jeffrey Dean Morgan

+resourceful, clever, street smart+ -greedy, self-serving, impulsive-

[ckret2]

Chapter 92 of Bill Cipher using his involuntary human girl disguise to give Agent Powers the manic pixie nightmare femme fatale treatment: the last step in Bill's plan to trick the agents into leaving Gravity Falls has been executed; and Ford gets an opportunity to prove he really is the twin of professional con artist Stanley Pines.

When Powers pulled into the motel parking lot with Goldie, Trigger and Dale were already there, leaning against their car, with Trigger holding a laptop balanced on one arm. Dale gave Goldie a puzzled look as the pair joined them. "Why is she...?"

"She's cleared to view this material," Powers said brusquely. "Now, let's see what's in this file."

For added security from passersby, they piled into the government vehicle, Trigger and Dale in the front, Goldie and Powers in the back. Trigger awkwardly positioned the laptop on the center console so that all four of them could see it, and then he opened up the flash drive's folder, revealing well over a hundred reports—Powers did not remember making that many reports. Together, they began skimming through the documents.

It was like being sprayed with a fire hydrant of information as his memories rushed back in.

Report after report about weird things happening in and around the Mystery Shack. They exchanged concerned murmurs during the first couple of files—"Do you remember any of this?" "No."—before they fell silent, simply reading about the paranormal hotbed of the century. Ghosts, rogue AIs, a zombie attack—some he'd remembered, some he hadn't—and yes, Powers had been able to vaguely recall the zombie attack, but only as a memory so distant and abstract it felt like a dream. But he couldn't recall how they'd been attacked by zombies.

Until now.

Their investigation had apparently discovered Stanford Pines had an extensive criminal history under multiple names, was hiding some kind of doomsday weapon in the shack, stole radioactive waste from a... government facility...? hm.

Goldie nudged Powers and muttered, "Hey. Weren't you investigating here because a tipster reported there was somebody dangerous in the shack?"

He nodded slowly. "Could be."

Trigger was frowning deeper and deeper with each report. "How could we have just forgotten all of this? I wrote half of these! I—I remember them now, but... but now it feels like I never didn't remember." He looked at Powers in confusion. "We... didn't remember this earlier, did we? Didn't we have no idea what was happening in this town...?"

"We didn't," Powers said firmly.

"I think something's coming to me," Dale said. "About the doomsday weapon. I only came into town at the end of your investigation for the big raid on the shack—"

"I completely forgot about the raid," Trigger said with quiet horror.

"—but I—I remember the gravitational anomalies. Gravity kept turning off and on. Our cars were floating around."

"We were trying to find the doomsday weapon beneath the Mystery Shack," Trigger went on. "Somebody found a secret door in the gift shop..."

Powers murmured, "The moment we lost our memories."

For a split second, from his peripheral vision, Powers saw a flash of something almost triumphant in Goldie's face before her expression turned serious again. It nearly confused him until he recalled that only the other three of them were having their normal lives upended by the discovery of what had been done to their minds. For Goldie, there was no normal life to upend. She��already knew her mind had been destroyed by at least one encounter with the Blind Eye. What was a horror to them must have been a relief to her: the missing pieces finally falling back into place.

He took her hand; he wasn't sure whether for her comfort or his own.

Trigger scrolled quickly through several more reports—by now, just glimpsing the first few lines of each report was enough to unlock the buried memories. "This is everything we should have known last summer."

"It fills in all the gaps," Dale said. "It doesn't explain how we forgot it all, but..."

"Maybe some kind of... psychic defense field...?"

"Anything's possible. Once we get that equipment to scan the walls for electronics..."

Powers had tuned out Trigger and Dale's conversation. He was thinking about Stanford Pines—the con artist with multiple PhDs who had spent most of the seventies in several countries at once, according to everything their investigation had dug up. His past was so muddled they'd even entertained the possibility that there were multiple people who'd used Stanford Pines's identity—he had a dead twin brother (allegedly), it was difficult to tell whose trail was whose. But after everything he'd learned today, he'd begun to wonder about Stan Pines again.  About how he'd managed to find that radioactive waste. About his doomsday weapon.

"Memory gun," Goldie said, dragging Powers's attention back to the present.

Trigger and Dale stared at her. "What?"

She nudged Powers, "We found blueprints in the museum for a gun that erases memories—and a huge cache of stolen memories. Some secret society in town has been using it."

"Society of the Blind Eye," Powers said, taking over the explanation. "They're in cahoots with the Department of Cover-Ups to keep sensitive information secret. There's more than one active Bureau case in town." He took a deep breath. "We were on more than one Bureau case in town."

Dale's brows shot up in surprise at the same time Trigger's furrowed in confusion.

"Obviously, there's only one explanation," Goldie said, reaching toward the laptop to tap a picture of the Mystery Shack taken during one of their stake-outs. "Whatever's going on here—the DCU doesn't want anyone to know about it, including us. They called their friends in the Blind Eye to wipe our memories and keep us away from the Mystery Shack."

"'Our memories'?" Trigger echoed.

"She's with the Bureau." Powers could explain the rest later.

Goldie's theory was sound—but. But he couldn't believe Bureau's own parent department would treat its agents that way. He didn't want to believe it.

He was too afraid of the possibility to believe it.

Surely there must be another reasonable explanation. "Or, the Blind Eye betrayed the Department—and us."

He could tell by the look Goldie shot him that she hadn't considered that possibility. "Huh. It could have," she conceded. "It doesn't... doesn't quite sit right with me."

"None of this sits right with me." What did Powers do now? The agents in this town were drowning when they hadn't even realized they were in hot water. The Blind Eye, the Trembley case, the Pines case... There was something big in this town, and the police were in on it, the Bureau was in on it, he was in on it—and he didn't even know what it was or who he could trust.

But he knew where he could find out.

As Powers opened the car door, a look of panic flashed across Goldie's face. "Hold on, where are you going?"

"To the Mystery Shack. It's time we finally get to the bottom of this. I'm not leaving until I see what's behind the vending machine and find Stanford Pines."

"Whoa-whoa-whoa! You've gotta be kidding me! Tell me you're kidding me!" Powers was only halfway out of the car when she caught him by the lapel and tried to drag him back into the car. "You'd have to be crazy to go back! It's obvious somebody higher up on the food chain than us doesn't want us snooping in there—"

"Or a rogue local cult," Powers said.

"Either way!" Her grip tightened. "You got your mind erased for going there last time! Do you want to get brainwashed again?!"

The thought terrified him. But the thought of not finding out what was happening terrified him more. He couldn't afford to think about what might happen to him; he pushed the thought aside. "This time is different. They won't be expecting our arrival and they won't have time to set up—whatever they did last time," Powers said. "And even if they do, we'll be split up. That way at least two of us will remember. Trigger?"

"Yessir!" Trigger hopped out of the car after Powers.

"But—but you can't," Goldie said desperately.

"Why not?"

"Because—" Her mouth hung open for a second as she tried and failed to think of a counterargument. Then, with a low growl of frustration, she dragged him into a kiss.

For a moment he hung there, half in and half out of the car, one hand on the back of the seat and the other hovering in the air, uncertain what to do with itself, until it finally settled on Goldie's waist. And for a split second, Gravity Falls and its horrors were a thousand miles away.

But only for a second. And then he put his hand on Goldie's shoulder, gently pushed her back, and tugged her hand off his suit. Her hand was so small and delicate compared to his; and her grip was so tight he was almost afraid he'd hurt her prying her off.  "I know," he said softly. "I know. Me too." 

Her face was flush with rage, her eyes wide with terror. "But—it's—too dangerous. You know it is."

"I know. But we're all in danger until we know what's going on." He had more people than just himself to worry about. He had to worry about his team.

His whole team. Goldie had already lost so much; what would happen to her mind if she lost any more?

She struggled a moment longer to think of another argument; then let out a noise that was half sigh of defeat, half groan of frustration. "Fine. Just... Get out of here before I give into the urge to break your knees."

####

"You two are cute," Dale commented.

"He'd be cuter if he did what I said," Bill muttered. Why couldn't everyone simply obey him at all times without question! He'd even pulled out the desperate kiss routine, humans were supposed to be suckers for that corny trash! He flung himself back into his seat with an indignant huff.

The plan had been going perfectly until now. He'd convinced Powers that the government and the Blind Eye were working together. He'd convinced Powers that they'd been brainwashed. The agents opening the flash drive and discovering what they'd forgotten was supposed to seal the deal. It was the key to his plan working! It was supposed to convince the agents that their own government was behind whatever was happening in the shack and they should stay out of it. It should have terrified Powers out of Gravity Falls! Not made him charge straight back into what looked like an obvious trap!

And if he found the portal... If he got his hands on either one of the Stans and dragged him downstairs too, where he could see Bill had started repairing the portal...

Now what?

Bill scooted behind Dale and leaned around the shoulder of his seat. "Hey, you should go through the rest of the reports. Maybe there's something else important we forgot."

"Good idea." Dale settled the laptop on his knees. "Powers said you're... with the Bureau?"

"Yep, proud eagle. Cryptology expert," Bill said.

"Oh." He gave him a mildly surprised look. "Sorry, I don't think I remember you."

"No prob, Bob, I don't remember the Bureau either!"

Dale nodded slowly. "Riiight. Memory-erasing gun."

"Bingo," Bill said. "Powers and I'll tell you the whole story when we rendezvous. But maybe we should focus on the reports first, don't you think!"

"Right, of course." Dale turned his attention to the laptop.

And Bill slid out his phone and kept it behind Dale's seat, where he wouldn't notice Bill typing.

####

UNKNOWN: STAR GIRL WE HAVE A PROVBKDM

UNKNOWN: PROBLEM

UNKNOWN: APPARENTLY PANIC MAKES THUMBS SHAKE! I HATE FLESH SO MUCHH! HA HA!

MABEL: Who is this?

UNKNOWN: ITS BILL I STOLE A PHONE NOT IMPORTANT DONT TWLL ANYONE

(Ah. Mabel should have guessed that. She added his number to her phone.)

BILL: POLWERS AND TRIGGER ARE HEADWD TO THES HACK

BILL: THIA WASNT PART OF THE PLAN

BILL: TELL THE STANDS TO HIDE

BILL: STANS

MABEL: OK! I'm looking for them!

MABEL: What went wrong???

BILL: IDK THEY DIDNTR REACT LIKE THEY SHOUDL HAVE

BILL: POWERS SHOULD BE TOO TEIRFIFIED TO GET WITHIN A MILE OF THE SHACK INSTEAD HES ONT EHW WARPATH

BILL: HES FIGURED OUT WAAAAY MORE THAN HE SHOULD HAVE IDK WHATS GOING ON UNDER HIS STUPID OPAQUE SKULL

MABEL: Did they figure out we tricked them??? 🙀

BILL: NO HE BUYS IT FOR NOW. HE RAN THE WHOLE MARATHON HE JUST REFUSES TO CROSS THE FINISH LINE 

BILL: BUT IF HE GETS HSI HANDS ON THE STAND WHO KNOWS

MABEL: OK, I warned them!

BILL: GOOD! TELL THEM THEY CANT HIDE BEHIND THE VENDING MACHINE PWOERS IS HEADED THERE FIRST

MABEL: Ummm... Grunkle Ford isn't hiding. 

MABEL: He said he knows how to handle this.

BILL: NO NO NO NO NO

BILL: WAHTEVER HES DOIGN HE CANT DOT TAHAT

BILL: STAR GIRL LISTEN CAREFULLY

BILL: I NED YOU TO SCREAMJ IN HIS EAR UTNIL HIS EARDRUM RUUPTIURES. THAT SHOULD SLOW HIM DOWN

BILL: IF IT D OESNT WORK BITE HIS EAR OFF YOUR RBRACES SHOULD REALLY SHRED THE CARTILAGE 

MABEL: He asked you to send whatever you can think of that the government people know about the agents but we shouldn't know.

BILL: WHY????

MABEL: IDK!! He went downstairs to get something.

MABEL: But it sounded important!

BILL: FGINE

BILL: IF THIS GOES WRONG ITS O NHIS ARROGANT LITTLE HEAD AND TELL HIM I SAAID SO

BILL: BUT DONT SHOW HIM MY TPYOS

####

"That vending machine might be booby trapped," Trigger said as they walked toward the shack's back door. "We lost our memories just as it was opened."

"We'll find Ramirez. He must know how to get behind the machine without triggering the trap." Beyond that, Powers intended to demand that Soos produce Stanford Pines—and, if he couldn't do that, then he'd better produce some damn good answers. Powers raised a hand to knock.

A voice behind them said, "It seems I got here just in time."

Trigger and Powers whirled around. Standing on the lawn—as casual and jarring as meeting a ghost from your childhood nightmares in the grocery store soup aisle, like running into something that hadn't quite ever been real—was the superior officer who'd taken their flash drive last summer.

"You!" Trigger said. "What are you doing here?!"

The officer barked, "Stopping you two knuckleheads from blundering into the same mistake you made last summer! And you're lucky I am. If Director Gunn had done his job right and contacted me, you wouldn't have made it this far."

A jolt of alarm shot up Powers's back. Director Gunn had sent them to Gravity Falls. Or allowed them to go—he'd been reluctant to let them continue on this case. Nobody outside the Bureau should have ever even heard the code name "Director Gunn."

"Instead," the officer went on, "I had to find out what you were up to from museum security when you triggered their silent alarm! Mr. Jake Armstrong," (Trigger flinched in surprise) "Mr. Gary Walter," (and then Powers's back went stiff) "just what do you have to say for yourselves?"

He was important enough to know their names. They didn't even know each other's names.

Powers took a deep breath. "That we want to speak to Stanford Pines."

The officer snorted, and for a fleeting second his stony expression cracked as a smirk curled up one corner of his mouth. Powers couldn't believe it. He genuinely thought their request was funny.

And that—that, of all things—was what finally cut through his anger enough for a little fear to trickle through.

"Well," he said, "I'm afraid you get to speak to me."

####

Bill stared at his phone as if the force of his glare could will it into coughing up another text from Mabel; and because of that, he saw the bright colors in the emoji of Mabel's next message fifteen minutes before the message itself actually arrived, and several minutes before the message was close enough that he could actually read what it said:

MABEL: 🎉🌈😎 We won!!! 😻☀️💃

He reread the message several times, as if he expected the future message to blur and disappear as they slid sideways into a less lucky timeline. But it remained clear—a future so probable it was almost guaranteed.

How the hell had Ford done that?

####

"As you may have guessed by now, this building isn't just a cheap tourist trap," the superior officer said. "What happens in here goes over your head, gentlemen. It goes over your entire bureau. It's a matter of international security."

"Why?" Powers demanded. "What's under this shack?"

"A top secret facility," the officer said.

"For what purpose?" Trigger asked.

"That's top secret," the officer said. "This whole affair is so classified that you should never have been assigned to investigate in Gravity Falls in the first place—but it was also so classified that we couldn't tell you there was something here you shouldn't be investigating. A SNAFU we're implementing measures to prevent in the future. And you two can help by leaving and never thinking about this place again."

It all clicked into place. Of course the Mystery Shack was a government facility.

He'd almost put it together earlier, but had been too distracted by the horror of realizing all he'd forgotten—but it was odd that Stan Pines had known exactly where to find that radioactive waste, much less how to get it all in and out of the facility in one night, wasn't it? Almost as if someone else had given him instructions on how to get it. Odd that based on the reports they'd found in the flash drive—and their resurfacing memories—it seemed that Stan had been on the verge of using a doomsday weapon... and then hadn't. As if it were a test. Odd that a "superior officer" had just so happened to come by so soon after the doomsday weapon's near activation, right after they'd forgotten everything. As if he were already on site.

It would have been utterly astounding if it wasn't so disgusting. The Department of Cover-Ups had covered up their own tracks so heavily that they'd gotten investigated by their own sub-department. And who had paid the price?

"It's too late for that," Powers said. "We already investigated it, we know something's happening here, and your attempt to make us forget failed. And I think we have a right to know what's in here that was worth erasing our memories over!"

"I'm afraid that's not possible," the officer said.

"Why not?" Trigger demanded. "All we want is to see it! We're not going to tell anyone—we're on the same side!"

Powers was closer to the shack than the officer was—and for the moment, the officer was focused on Trigger. Part of him was tempted to turn around, kick in the door, and head straight for that vending machine. If it came to a fight, it was two against one.

The officer said, "Because you already know too much! In fact, I'd be giving you the same treatment you got last year if I wasn't so sure that forgetting what happened again would just make you come straight back to town searching for it again."

Powers was suddenly acutely aware of the strap across the officer's chest leading to a shape at his hip that could only be seen when his coat moved just right—a shape the size of a bulky gun. And suddenly, the idea of turning his back on the officer seemed impossible.

"And you should consider yourselves lucky you get to leave with your memories," the officer went on. "The side-effects of repeated mind wipes aren't pretty. You've got a genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's, don't you, Mr. Walter? Your mother?" (Angry bile surged up his throat. His mother had been in a memory care facility for the past two years.) "We don't know yet if the gun exacerbates those odds. I'd hate for you to help us find out."

"Then you could have let us go last year!" Powers said. "If you'd just told us we'd stumbled into some secret operation and sent us home, we couldn't have done anything about it!" And if he was honest with himself, it wasn't the secret happenings under this second-rate tourist trap that bothered him. In this job he'd seen everything from A to Z—aliens to zombies. He doubted anything could truly shock him. No—what really bothered him was how he'd been kept from finding out. "Why didn't you just let us go last year?"

"For one thing, that's not how my department operates." (Powers had assumed Gravity Falls was an aberration. What made him so sure people weren't getting their memories erased all over the nation? What did he really know about how the Department of Cover-Ups worked?) "And for another," the officer said, "we needed a good excuse to test the long-range memory gun. And there you were, with several dozen men."

There you were. The words hit like a hammer to the heart. In the corner of his eye he could see Trigger turn toward him, looking for guidance; but Powers couldn't turn to meet his gaze. There they were, convenient guinea pigs for a weapon of mass amnesia. Was that all their government saw them as?

While Powers was feeling the bottom of his stomach drop out and plunge into the dark as his life upended itself, the officer's expression didn't even twitch. His stare was stony and unsympathetic, the creases in his cheeks and between his brows sharpened by the hard line of his mouth.

But although his expression didn't change, his voice did. It dropped into a wholly different accent, slower, smoother—and far more menacing. "You see, we'll take any measures necessary to ensure that this town's secrets... remain buried." The chill in the officer's voice seemed better suited to the dark hidden chambers collecting dust under the museum, the cold cavern beneath the angel in the graveyard. The man with the voice from the Blind Eye's stolen memories looked directly in Agent Powers's eyes and said, "Is my meaning clear?"

Powers's throat went dry.

Trigger had immediately tensed when the officer changed his voice, even though he couldn't know what it meant. (Or did he? Had he heard the voice once and forgotten, Powers wondered? Was it coming back?) "Sir, what's going...?"

"Yessir," Powers said hoarsely. "Perfectly clear."

The ghost of a smile twisted one corner of the superior officer's mouth. "So. What is going on here, agent?" His voice had returned to his usual gruff, militant bark. That was his real voice, Powers realized; hearing him in person, it was much more obvious  than it had been in the recordings just how fake his British accent was. He must be working with the Society of the Blind Eye undercover—which meant this was his real job.

Powers should have listened to Goldie. She'd been right. It was stupid to think the Blind Eye might have backstabbed the government. The Blind Eye was the government.

In his mind's eye, he could see his own face twisted in terror, his arms strapped into the same chair where Goldie had been restrained as she'd lost her mind—just another video amongst the thousands that had been literally forgotten in the museum basement.

He swallowed hard. "Weather balloon," he said. "Or—or meteor shower. Nothing happened here."

The officer nodded sharply. "You're a smart man, Mr. Walter." He turned to Trigger. "What about you, Mr. Armstrong?"

Trigger gave Powers a bewildered look. For a moment, he looked ready to argue; but a sharp look from Powers deflated him. "Nothing unusual to report, sir," he said grudgingly.

"Good." The superior officer tilted his head. "I think your car's over there."

Powers could feel the hairs on the back of his neck raising as he walked away. He had to force himself not to glance over his shoulder to see if a memory gun was pointing at his back.

"What was that?" Trigger whispered. "Do you know him from somewhere else?"

"I'm afraid we all do."

"Where would—?"

"Later." Not until they got back to Dale.

And Goldie.

####

(Another chapter where I don't think I made any changes due to TBOB except futzing around with department names. But for TBOB-unrelated reasons, this one went through HEAVY revisions: initially Powers accepted Bill's version of the story much more easily, but then I went, no. We should terrify Bill a little first. And give Ford more to do.

I thought this chapter was gonna be the wrap-up, but then it doubled in length so I split it in two lmao. Next week for sure. Let me know what you think!!)

[voidofthevoidmv]

HELP! Our Sitters are TIME TRAVELERS!!!

(A gravity falls time travel fanfiction teaser)

Prologue/teaser ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Time log- 11:05 pm filed:

LOCATION: Barranquilla, Colombia

DATE: 1970-something

STATUS: SECURE

Progressing as scheduled…

It’s a quiet night down here in Colombia, at least it was for a great many of residents. Truly, it would've been described as a peaceful moment. The sky was filled with more stars to count, and the atmosphere was a deep shade of purple which coated everything in a soft nightlike shade. The air was warm too, not too hot nor too cold. A perfect night really, for the majority folks that is.

For some, not so much- Which was something of a newfound reality concerning a certain person in particular. Hidden behind the depths of dark alleys, past the crowded streets and through the celebratory storefronts- Stood a bright red convertible half covered in tarp alongside a man-soaked head to toe in water. The front of his shirt was stained rusty red, as well as any area around his face really, and the only truly accurate word to describe him would be ‘Shaken.’

His nose was especially rosy as if he’d been drinking or at least somewhat inebriated, and not one single part of him seemed dry to touch. His ratty brown hair was long behind his ears and curled a bit from the moisture and overall painted a picture. It was clear that something terrible had happened, if the shifty eyes glancing about and the incessantly trembling limbs didn’t speak volumes in that of itself.

Unlike most people on this warm Colombian night, Stanley Pines was not having a good time.

He could be seen reaching a still shaky hand towards his jean pocket, pulling out an object and a small pack of still dripping cigarettes.

“Damn lighter... Just needa’ smoke...” Stanley hissed to himself as he fumbled with the small copper device again, his burlesque fingers swiping fruitlessly as sparks fly without a flicker of a flame in sight.

He keeps doing this, growling under his breath as the beginnings of frustration start to show on his face. It makes him seem almost ghostly, the scowl making the dark circles under his eyes more prominent than before.

A soggy cigarette in his mouth and stuck between his teeth as he flicked the rusted lighter continuously.

“Cmon… Cmon… Just one more time, just one more…”

This time, he succeeds and much like the small pathetic flame of the device, Stan’s entire disposition brightens.

“Yes! Yes, haha!” He cheered almost manically, his raspy voice spitting out a guffaw as he pumped a fist in the air. Suddenly, his face softened a bit, raising the flame to the small cigarette pinched between the corner of his mouth. With some amount of effort, he managed to light the tip of the cigarette. He exhaled a puff of smoke and leaned even more so on his beloved red convertible.

“I guess one good thing did happen today, huh?” He chuckled again, it was a wry one and had notes of bitterness but a chuckle, nonetheless.

“Alls’ I had to do was get locked in the trunk of a car and chew my way out. Guess I was lucky to nab that guys pack of cigs before he locked the thing… Bet he’s wondering where this baby went, hah…”

After taking another inhale of the cigarette, he held it in a moment before exhaling with wide eyes, pushing himself off the car to bark out a full-fledged laugh. He then rattled his fist to the air with a giant smile on his face- Revealing a mouth clearly torn to shreds and his teeth were bloodied and chipped.

“Hear that, universe!!!??? STANLEY PINES LIVES TO SMOKE ANOTHER DAY!! HAH HAH HAH!” He then made a few rather... Rude gestures towards the sky, presumably to the ‘universe’ specifically.

After a few seconds, the manic episode passes and it's just him and the sounds of night in that back alley. Every now and then he would raise that soggy cancer stick to suck in another breath of smoke and exhale, though it was bringing to get droopy in his fingers. In the dim light of a single streetlamp, it too was a seemingly peaceful scene. Which was really no good for Stan, for it’s always when he has time to himself that he starts to really THINK about things, things that depress him.

Smile long wiped from his face, he dragged a hand across his cheek as his expression shifts that into a frown. In a split second, he looked so awfully tired.

Things really couldn't get any worse than this... Could it?

CLITTER CLATTER!!!

Suddenly, Stan is snapped out of his negative thoughts to the sound of something making a real racket in the nearby alleyway, just across from himself.

“What the-” Startled, he sort of fumbles with his soggy cigarette a few moments with eyes blown wide. That was the issue with being on the run all the time, even the smallest things could have you on the same kind of edge as if it’s life or death.

For instance, that clatter noise was probably a cat or something.

CLATTER! CLITTER CLATTER! CLATTER!

... Of course, that didn't stop him from investigating though. On any other ordinary day on the run, Stan would do well to keep his nose out of trouble, however he was feeling risky. After all, it wouldn't be fair to throw him into another life-or-death situation after the last one- Just the universal law of ‘wait a sec’ honestly.

Why, if something bad were to happen to him now- Why, something would be seriously wrong with the balance of the universe. Or something. Probably.

-And so, with eyes squinting inquisitively, he tossed his cigarette aside and began towards the alleyway. Walking slowly as to not startle whatever it was in the alleyway, he left the dim light if the streetlamp and crossed the boundary of shadow inside of the alleyway. It was like stepping into a whole differently painted room, whereas the first room you were in had white walls and this new room had black walls with the curtains drawn. Not only that, but the alley was incredibly stinky. Stan would feel real bad for anyone who got jumped or something here- Because in their last moments they’d likely be wondering who shat their pants. The clattering noise sounded again, making him only slightly flinch again.

CLATTER! CLATTER!

Sounded almost... Metallic. Like somebody was kicking a piece of shrapnel around. He knows the sound, he used to do it with... It reminded him of Ford in a way. Back when they were just kids, stupid, oblivious, happy kids...

Before... Before he-

“Focus Stan... Stop being weird about things...”

Eyes finally adjusting to the darkness that encompassed the grimy alleyway, Stan could now see the true culprit behind the tinny sound being kicked around.

It was a tin can...

“Well, waddea’ know...”

Stan nearly jumped out of his skin all over again when the can jerked towards him- And a bright light flashed.

“Woah!!!”

...A tin can that was somehow moving on its own.

Stan began towards the thing as it jerked across the dirt ground, moving in such a way it seemed almost like somebody tied a string to it and was just tugging it all around to mess with him. But it also sparked a few times, which made it seem like maybe there was a firecracker wedged in the can or something.

It took him a few times, but pretty soon he had the cylindrical object cornered.

“Gotcha!”

Ok, so sue him, he was just a little curious...

...Ford wasn't the only curious one, you know?

He reached out to grab the little can, his hand making contact to its smooth surface and he noted that it was cool to the touch. Not a firecracker. No firepower at all, which was super weird.

Was it just Stan, or did everything suddenly get REALLY quiet?

In the eerie silence however, he hears something coming from inside the can- Which believe it or not, begins to tremble in his hands. It's really moving on its own- It's not just Stan shaking or anything...

Kssssshhhhh....

The strange noise from inside the can sounds like it's getting louder, despite the homeless man clearly seeing absolutely nothing from within when he peered inside the empty old can. It was freaky, but he was morbidly curious. Plus, it was getting to the point that he had to hold the can with both hands to keep it from literally squirming out of his hands- It would probably go bouncing off the freaking walls if Stan hadn't been holding it.

It was the kind of noise that made your head ache a little bit, what, was it called again? Teni- Tenino? Tentitus? The thing with the ringing in your ears, Tinnitus? Stan figured it was a similar thing.

KsssssssSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

In an instant, the sound from within the can gets awfully loud- Almost like a train whistling as it comes barreling at you at full speed- And Stan had enough sense to pull his face away from its opening to visibly cringe at the sound. Whatever remained of his teeth was bit into a sharp grimace and he was overcome with a terribly strong sense of WRONG.

“What the fu-”

Suddenly, a stream of color bursts forth from the can- Interrupting Stan and causing the con-man to yelp and drop the can whilst backing away. For what had somehow emerged from within- Because yes, something HAD emerged from that dumb old can- Was some kind of impossibly large serpentine worm thing, with a gaping mouth and a rainbow of stripes painting its multicolored back.

It almost seemed to sap all the vibrancy of everything around it, glitching in a way that made it seem out of place- Or at least as out of place a ginormous man eating worm that just emerged from a tiny can could be.

“What the what the what the-” For the first time in a long time, Stanley Pines was at a loss for words.

He didn't even get a chance to fully get back on his feet- (Which confuses him greatly because how he managed to fall to the ground in only few short minutes is beyond the point.)

He scrambled to a standing position- Trying not to gape as the worm thing- That could FLOAT apparently- Began to coil in midair and loomed above him. From this angle, Stan could get a really go view of its giant mouth- And if he’s being honest- it didn't exactly look like the sort of thing he wanted to be on the business end of.

Millions upon millions of sharp needle-like teeth line its outer mouth, and the inside going down its throat looked to quite literally be a STATIC ABYSS.

“No no no nope no-” His feet finally put themselves to good use and he made a break for the alleyway entrance.

This seemed to trigger the beast to action.

There was a screeching noise, and Stan could feel his heart drop to his stomach white the strange incomprehensible creature let loose an unholy noise and readied itself to lunge. Yet, for some reason, Stan couldn't help but feel he wasn't running fast enough-

Time seemed to go in slow motion now as the creature leaped towards its prey.

“WAIT-” Stan couldn't even finish his sentence, as the worm surged forwards towards him like a semi-truck, its mouth opening impossibly wide to completely encompass the homeless man. Whatever noise he had been making beforehand was immediately swallowed into nothing as the beasts mouth clamped tightly shut.

Victorious, the creature curled into the air afterwards- Almost pleased with itself as it did so.

Uninterested in anything more, the worm was quick to burrow quite literally into midair to leave, and as it zoomed past the rainbow color on its slimy skin seemed to blur into some kind of optical illusion.

Soon, there was nothing in the alleyway but a red car, the stunning night sky, and the sounds of quiet resonating through the area. That, and upon the consumption of Stanley, there was a ginormous patch of static developing where he had been last seen. The static seemed to only spread even more and more as time progressed, devouring everything in its path and destabilizing it...

Life itself was crumbling in on itself...

Soon, all that was left of the scene was a singular wet cigarette on the grimy alleyway floor, but eventually, even that too dissolved into pure static.

One thing was for absolute certain, Stanley had been dead wrong.

Things certainly could get worse...

And they did...

Time log- 11:10 pm filed:

LOCATION: ????

DATE: ????

STATUS: COMPROMISED!

⏳🪱🪱🪱⌛️

And that’s the end of this little teaser, hope you enjoyed haha- Trust me, it’s pretty sweet I swear. I just had to technically kill off a character to prove a point. Tbh, I might tweak this portion a bit, just cuz I can.

Basic gist if your interested:

It's been 4 years since that fateful summer in Gravity Falls, and our favorite young Pines still can't get a break. The two 16-year-olds are enlisted by the Time Anomaly Removal Crew- Which has since dwindled after the events of Weirdmaggedon- Because a TIME WORM has been set loose upon the timeline!

They must ask the twins to deal with it because they don't really have very much experience dealing with monsters, and with the extreme loss of bodies in their department they can't risk losing more officers. Dipper and Mable have half a mind to refuse; however the worm is targeting versions of their Grunkles from the past

(Cuz Time worms are drawn in by “canon people” which are folks whose presence holds great precedence in the timeline.-)

It has already managed to eat a couple stans and Fords from points in time- However there's still a way to save the timeline which is by killing it. Luckily, the TARC have managed to predict the trajectory of the worm, and plan to send the twins in earlier so that they have the jump on it. They have hologram disguises so that no one puts together their relation to the current time-period pines...

Meanwhile, in the 1900s, the 12-year-olds Stan and Ford are apprehensive of their newest babysitters... Yes, the disguised versions of Mabel and Dipper- Now Travis and Vanellope- Take to babysitting the young twins to scope out for time worms and protect the kids from being eaten. Chaos ensues.

Lemmy know if folks are interested lol

[hobipobi]

The Echo of Steel and Ash

Stanley Snyder x Male Reader

Summary: A soldier and his former trainee reunite after years apart, reigniting a deep, unresolved bond forged in war.

Very short one-shot.

Inspired by a bot on Character.ai lol (pls don't kill me)

Warnings: short, 3 year age gap, slightly spicy by the end but nothing too much.

Words: 941

War doesn’t end with treaties.

It doesn’t fold neatly into history books or dissolve under flags and fireworks.

War lingers — in the silence of early mornings, in the shape of a man’s gait, in the sharp way some people look over their shoulders like they expect a bullet.

It lives in muscle memory, in nightmares, in the things left unsaid.

Stanley Snyder was not a man born of peace. He was sculpted in the crucible of blood-soaked snow and whisper-quiet kills. If war had a face, it might’ve looked like his — sharp-jawed, cold-eyed, eternally alert. There was nothing accidental about Snyder; every movement was deliberate, every word measured. To those under his command, he was myth and menace, the kind of soldier you didn’t look at too long for fear he might see something in you — and carve it out.

He wasn’t decorated for gallantry. His medals were awarded in sealed ceremonies, his reports redacted until they were more black than ink.

Cold War operations.

Black sites.

Asset removals.

Things that disappeared in smoke and gunpowder.

By twenty-one, he wasn’t just respected — he was feared. The kind of operative whispered about in tents at night by men too shaken to sleep.

And then came the boy.

Eighteen.

Civilian file barely dry, barely legal to hold a rifle.

But the fire in him — it burned. Not the reckless kind found in young men trying to prove themselves. This was something older, darker. M!Y/n didn’t walk into basic training; he stormed into it like he had something to prove to God. He didn’t smile, didn’t flinch. Everything about him said he had already survived something worse.

Snyder saw him and didn’t blink.

Didn’t have to.

He knew the look of a haunted soul trying to crawl its way out of the dirt. M!Y/n was a blade, dull but unbroken, waiting to be tempered in fire.

So Snyder did what he did best.

He broke him.

Ice drills at dawn. Forced marches. Hours in gas masks. Night simulations with live rounds. Psychological drills that made older soldiers tremble. He stripped the boy bare — of ego, of fear, of illusion — and what remained was something clean.

Something lethal.

But beneath the soldier, there was still a boy. A boy who looked at Snyder like he was both salvation and damnation. A boy who stayed after drills, lingered too long in doorways, whose hands sometimes brushed Snyder’s under the excuse of gear adjustments.

And Snyder, who had always known where the line was — and when to cross it — didn’t cross. At least, not at first.

It happened on a night soaked with rain, adrenaline still humming in their bones after a successful field op.

Alone in the barracks, hearts still pounding, Snyder looked at M!Y/n and saw something he couldn’t unsee. Saw the way the water traced his collarbone. The way those eyes begged for something that had nothing to do with orders.

He closed the distance. No words. Just heat. Contact. The kiss wasn’t gentle — it was desperate, urgent, inevitable.

And it didn’t stop.

In the days that followed, their bond grew sharper. A secret pact forged in quiet touches, in lingering glances exchanged over rifles and rations.

Snyder gave the boy his discipline, his silence, his trust.

M!Y/n gave him his youth, his loyalty, his whole damn heart.

But war has no mercy. It takes and takes until there’s nothing left. And Snyder knew — love was just another weakness to be used.

So he let him go.

No warning. No goodbye. Just an assignment reassignment slip and an order to move on.

“Live beyond this,” Snyder had said. And that was the last thing he said.

---

Four years and a hundred lives later, Lieutenant M!Y/n strode into a secured briefing room with medals gleaming on his chest and ghosts in his shadow. His uniform was sharp, posture rigid, but the fire in his eyes — that hadn’t dimmed.

The room was cluttered with intel — topographic maps, intercepted communiqués, satellite photos. High-level brass murmured, voices clipped and professional. The smell of coffee, sweat, and cold steel hung in the air.

And then, at the head of the table — he saw him.

Stanley Snyder.

Unchanged. And yet, older. Weathered. The same sharp cheekbones, but his hair was longer now — swept back, no-nonsense. Uniform immaculate. Command rolled off him like heat.

Their eyes met.

For just a second, everything else fell away.

“Coping?” Snyder asked, voice a blade wrapped in velvet.

M!Y/n gave a crooked smile. “Barely. But I see you managed not to die without me.”

A flicker. That was all Snyder gave. A blink, a twitch of a smile that never reached his eyes.

They spent the next forty-five minutes discussing insurgent movements, asset extractions, and encrypted locations — but none of it mattered. Not really. M!Y/n could barely register the words. All he heard was the unspoken — the echo of rain on metal, the rhythm of Snyder’s breath in the dark.

When the room emptied, Snyder didn’t move. Just tilted his head slightly.

“Stay.”

It wasn’t an order. It wasn’t a question.

It was a plea.

M!Y/n stayed.

The room seemed to shrink in the silence that followed. Years of absence pulsed in the air between them, thick and electric. Snyder stepped closer.

“Come here,” he said — soft, guttural.

And M!Y/n did.

No salutes. No rank. Just two men caught in a war they’d never stopped fighting. Snyder reached out, slow — thumb brushing the edge of M!Y/n’s lip like he was checking to see if the boy still tasted like rain.

“You came back stronger,” he said.

M!Y/n’s voice trembled. “I came back for you.”

Snyder didn’t kiss him. Not yet.

He breathed him in like a memory, like an ache he’d never healed from.

Then — their mouths met. A rush. A collision. Years of silence broken by the sound of breath and hunger.

It wasn’t gentle. It was possession.

“You’re mine,” Snyder rasped, gripping the back of his neck.

“I always was,” M!Y/n whispered, teeth grazing his jaw.

They left the room like shadows — silent, seamless. No one dared to question them. The halls blurred. Snyder’s hand gripped his arm like a tether.

They reached quarters. The door slammed shut behind them.

---

The room was stark. Government-issue cot. Steel locker. Faint light flickering from the overhead bulb. But none of it mattered.

Because M!Y/n was pinned to the wall, Snyder’s breath hot on his throat.

This wasn’t lust. It was reclamation.

Clothes came off in frantic motions — belt clinking, fabric tearing, boots thudding to the floor.

Snyder was all sinew and scars, lean muscle forged through discipline. M!Y/n’s fingers traced every old wound, every brutal memory etched into flesh.

“You never stopped being mine,” Snyder whispered into his skin.

“I never wanted to.”

The cot groaned beneath them. Their bodies met with urgency, heat building like a battlefield flare. Every gasp, every moan, every whispered name — it filled the room like a hymn.

And afterward — when they were nothing but sweat and breath and tremors — Snyder pulled him in, arm wrapped across his chest like a shield.

The silence stretched. Comfortable now. Heavy with meaning.

“I never looked away,” Snyder said, voice hoarse. “Even when I swore I would. I followed every op. Every mission. I knew when you were wounded. When you got promoted. When you were sent behind enemy lines.”

M!Y/n kissed his temple, lips soft and sure. “I knew. I felt you in every goddamn heartbeat.”

Snyder laughed then. Not joy — release. The sound of a dam breaking.

They didn’t sleep. Not really. But they held each other as the night stretched on. Two men carved by war, bonded by something stronger than rank or duty.

No more ghosts. No more orders. Just this.

A chance to breathe. To rebuild.

To begin again.

2025 © hobipobi — do not repost or translate my work. Likes, reblogs, and comments are welcome.

[sapphosscribe]

How awkward is it gonna be when Stan gets home after all that happened LMAO like im imaging it being like

Mable: "omg how did it gooo!!!!?"

Stan: "it went- it went well id say"

Mable: "what happened??"

Stan: "ill te you when you get older" LOL

Just for you, a little behind the scenes interaction ☺️:

Stan left out in the early hours when the sun was just beginning to lighten the horizon.

Fiddleford had tried to convince him to stay for breakfast, but Stan had gently declined the invitation, not wanting a run in with Tate.

“Besides, I got my own breakfast duties. Dipper and Mabel would starve if it was up to Ford to feed ‘em. I gotta get back.” Fiddleford had eyed him wistfully, ghosting a hand down his arm.

“I sure know enough not to get between you and those young’uns. Maybe I can cook up something for you one day.” Stan felt himself getting all sappy with the way Fiddleford was gazing at him and looked away.

“If you want. I wouldn’t mind it,” he replied. Fiddleford hummed.

“I’d love to,” he said reaching up to peck a kiss on his cheek, “you drive safe now.”

Stan caught him before he could pull away, giving Fidds a proper goodbye kiss that he sighed into. Stan wanted to deepen it, to crawl right back into bed, but he forced himself to pull away, watching a hundred watt grin spread across Fidds’ face.

“I’ll call you,” he promised, looking back at him even as he descended the steps. The soft muss of Fidds’ hair and the even softer look in his eyes as he pressed his hand to his mouth made Stan’s heart do somersaults in his chest.

“Or you call me! Whenever you want! Honest! I’m not-! Shit!” Stan stumbled as he rammed into the side his car, having not paid enough attention to where he was going. Fiddleford barked out a laugh, watching him, and Stan flushed under his gaze.

“Anyway, uh, good night. Good morning!” He corrected, climbing into his car and starting it up.

The drive across town had only taken about twenty minutes, but Stan let the windows down on the way the brisk morning air of the forest filling his senses as he sung along to whatever was on the radio and drummed his fingers on the wheel. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t stop smiling.

The Mystery Shack at this time of the day was quiet and peaceful before crowds of tourists started filing in and the entire thing filled up with the noise and laughter of the twins and Ford, Soos and Melody giving tours, and Wendy playing her music over the speakers. His family. Stan chuckled to himself, parking the Diablo and humming Bruce Springsteen as he jogged up the porch steps. He was a little sore from last night, but even the ache in his back was welcome as he carefully opened the door and eased it shut behind him.

He wanted to clean up before Ford or the twins saw him. It wasn’t like he was debauched or anything, but he’d rather not get any curious stares or questions.

He turned around, ready to tiptoe down the hall to his room, when a sharp mechanical whine sounded from behind him that made him wince.

Shit. He should have known.

“Stanley?” His brother asked. He looked over his shoulder to find Ford with his energy weapon primed and leveled at his back, though the barrel was tipped down to the floor now.

“Yep. That’s me,” he said, a disgruntled look overtaking his twins face.

“What in the name of Sagan are you doing sneaking around? I thought you were some ill-intentioned intruder!”

“Shh! Keep it down, would ya?” Stan hissed, flagging his hands for quiet, “why the hell are you up so early?”

The question seemed to make his twin bristle, eyes darting away.

“Well… I could ask you the same question! It’s highly irregular for you to be awake before six! Much less dressed like-. Hang on,” Ford said, stopping his spiel to step closer even as Stan took a step back. He narrowed his eyes, inspecting his clothes.

“You wore this last night,” he said, giving him a confused look as Stan stared somewhere over his shoulder and fought down a blush, “it’s impractical as loungewear. Why do you have it on?”

“It was the only thing I had unless you wanted me driving home across town naked,” Stan snapped, embarrassed and irritated. Ford still seemed baffled.

“Driving home? Where were…?”

Stan sees the moment Ford figures it out, eyes widening and mouth forming a small ‘o’ as his face turns pink, then red in quick succession.

“O-oh!”

“Yeah,” Stan replied flatly, looking anywhere but at his twin. Ford stood rooted to the spot.

“So… um. The date was a success, then?” His brother asked stiltedly.

“Uh huh.”

“And did you two… have a good time?” He asked, fiddling with his hands before tucking them behind his back. Stan frowned, watching him.

Clearly, his brother was trying to express his support and interest with these platitudes and Stan appreciated the gesture, really, but all he wanted at the moment was a hot shower and some clothes that didn’t still have Fiddleford’s scent clinging to them.

“I don’t want to have this conversation right now, so I’m gonna go,” he said bluntly, watching relief flood Ford’s face. His twin nodded vigorously.

“Yes. Of course. Right. Good morning,” he said as Stan turned and retreated into his bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind him and locking it.

Somewhere in his pocket, his phone vibrated and Stan fished it out to find a message waiting for him

Fiddleford, 5:23 am

I had fun last night. Can’t wait for the next time. 😘

And, once again, Stan found himself grinning like an idiot.

Live footage of Stan after receiving that text:

[pocket-lad]

CH 5- A Small Nudge (Gravity Falls g/t)

1 ● 2 ● 3 ● 4 ● 5

Evie watched from Ford’s desk as he cleaned around the basement. He didn’t know she was there yet, but it wouldn’t even matter if he did, given the argument they had not too long ago.

“You can’t just ignore me,” she said finally, and the way he froze for less than a second was the only indication he heard her. He continued about his business.

Evie sighed dramatically, then plopped down to a seat. He could just ignore her, but he couldn’t make her go away. She’d make him talk eventually…somehow.

***

Ford had lectured Stan up and down and backwards and forwards at this point, and everyone was sick of hearing it, especially Evie.

She piped up from her spot on the table. “If you’re mad at Stan, then you should be mad at me, too. I helped him build the portal.”

“You what ?”

Evie gulped. This new Ford was intense. Before she could defend herself, he continued. “I expect this kind of reckless behavior from Stanley, but you of all people should know better. You should know how dangerous that was!”

“I take offense to that,” Stan interjected.

“How should I know when you don’t tell me anything? Maybe if you didn’t push me away, I would have ‘known better’,” she said, throwing his own words back in his face. Her voice increased in volume as she spoke, and by the end of her sentence she was yelling.

“Well, it’s not as though I planned on being pushed through a portal.”

“Uh oh-” Stan said.

“What do you mean, 'pushed'?” Evie shouted, unable to stop the anger from steamrolling into her question, but she was more confused than anything.

Ford turned on Stan. “All this time, and you didn’t tell her that you pushed me through?”

“I was getting around to it-” A sharp glare from Ford cut him off. He shifted the glare to Evie, then stormed off.

Evie threw her arms in the air, exasperated. “Wait!” But there was nothing she could do that would stop a giant.

“Eh, he’ll cool off eventually…,” Stan said, waving Ford off. “...maybe…You know, now that I think about it…maybe not.”

Evie didn’t want to hear it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Look, you were already so scared of me, I wasn’t gonna make it worse by-” As he spoke, he reached in to nudge her with a knuckle, his go-to move when things got too heavy.

“Don’t,” she recoiled.

"Come on!" Stan teased, and he nudged her anyway. Evie tried to push his finger away, and even though she knew it was in vain, she was still frustrated that she couldn't. She was frustrated that she just had to let it happen. She always had to roll with the punches, because at only a couple inches in height, what other choice was there?

Refusing to dignify that with a response, she didn't look back as she took off to go find Ford.

***

Ford spun in a circle, looking for that stack of papers he set down somewhere. He just finished emptying the filing cabinet of Stan’s various, unorganized documents. He located the papers on his desk, but unfortunately, someone was sitting on them.

He gave Evie a look that said, ‘move’, but she stayed put, crossing her arms and staring right back. If he wasn’t gonna ask, then he wasn’t gonna get a response.

Ford sighed, then grabbed the papers anyway. Evie tumbled backwards as he pulled them out from under her, head over heels, and landed sprawled out on the cold metal of the desk. “Hey!”

Ford rubbed his forehead, and in an obligatory tone, asked, “Are you alright?”

A number of sarcastic remarks nearly made it to Evie’s mouth, but she had his attention now. She didn’t want to lose it and push him away further. “Yeah…Are you?”

Ford hesitated for a long moment. Evie watched him debate with himself, and she honestly had no clue if he was going to answer. He was very different now, hardened from his time fighting his way through the multiverse. But, she supposed she was different too. A lot can change over thirty years. That didn’t mean she liked it.

“Yes,” he finally said.

Evie exhaled sharply. “Alright. You don’t have to forgive me, but can you at least talk to me?”

He turned to her, his eyebrows raised impatiently.

“Okay, fine. Answer me this, and I’ll leave you alone……If Stan or I went through the portal, would you have reopened it?”

“Of course not.”

Ouch.

Evie honestly did not expect that answer, and moreso, she didn’t expect it to come so quickly. But she also didn’t believe him. He experienced horrible atrocities in that portal, which shaped how he was looking at the whole situation. Deep down, Evie believed he would work just as hard, if not harder, for her or Stan. Especially Stan. Maybe it would take him a while to come around to it, but he had a heart buried somewhere in there. “Hmm.”

“No, I - that’s not a fair question. I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have done, but I know what happened. And it was reckless-”

“-reckless to open it, I know. But did you ever consider that we did it because we care about you? That we dedicated thirty years of our lives to getting you back because you mean something to us?”

Ford was speechless.

“Come here,” Evie said.

Ford awkwardly shuffled over and rested his hand a couple inches away from her. Refusing to feel intimidated, Evie jogged to him and rested her own hand on his index finger. It was covered in dozens of miniscule cuts and scars. There was no telling how old they were.

“You need help with anything?” she offered. He almost tugged his hand away. She could feel the impulsive twitch just underneath the skin, but he didn’t follow through. She bit her lip, awaiting his answer.

“No, no help is necessary.” Damn. She really thought she had him. “But,” he continued, “I’d enjoy some company.”

Evie couldn’t help the smile that lit up her face. She pushed on his finger, knowing full well she couldn’t budge it, but he played along, flipping his hand over for her. With only a brief hesitation, she climbed into his palm. It was rougher than before, it had plenty more wrinkles, but all six fingers were accounted for.

Ford immediately whisked her away, dumping her haphazardly on the top of the filing cabinet. Disoriented and a little nauseous, Evie chuckled. This was the Ford she knew. Quick and a little thoughtless, but eager to show her whatever he was working on.

She swung her legs over the edge and peered way down into the filing cabinet he was organizing. It was probably very methodical to him, but she sure couldn’t figure out the method. After a while, she fell into a sort of trance.

As the night wore on, they actually talked. Evie did her best to fill him in on the last thirty years, but she admitted he should probably ask Stan, Dipper, Mabel, or literally anyone else, since she spent every waking moment inside the shack. He explained that he appreciated her unique view on current events, not in spite of her limited information, but because of it. Something told her he thought it was amusing, but whatever kept him talking.

Ford didn’t say much about what happened over the years, but what little Evie was able to extract out of him sounded…weird. Some dimensions sounded downright terrifying, others physically impossible. Even the idea of dimension hopping still didn’t seem feasible, despite having worked on a literal portal for most of her life.

They steered clear of the ‘Stan’ topic, but it appeared as though they both had some forgiveness to dish out. Perhaps even some apologies.

And no matter how ‘reckless’ it was, or how much it ‘shouldn't have happened’, Ford had to admit he appreciated the company opening the portal provided. He found comfort in having his old friend back, and he was surprised she wanted anything to do with him based on how they parted ways. With the memory of that night now at the forefront of both their minds, the comfortable silence soon shifted to an anxious one.

It didn’t escape Evie’s notice that, for the first time since Ford returned, she was truly alone with him. No Stan. No kids. Nobody but her and Ford. Without a doubt, she trusted him. She did not trust this ‘monster’ that supposedly lived in his head. It had yet to make a reappearance, but Evie feared it was only a matter of time.

“Before you left…,” she started, but found she didn’t have an end to the sentence.

Ford picked up on her meaning. He suddenly went quiet and turned his attention toward something out of Evie’s eyeline, his back to her.

“Is it still here?” she whispered. She almost didn’t want to ask, afraid she might speak the being back into existence. Afraid Ford’s mind would snap again. She took note of her surroundings. The walls were very far away. He was very tall. The overwhelming, instinctual urge to hide made her feel itchy.

It was a long moment of contemplation. Ford did not want to talk about this, and even though he was unable to remember most of the night, brief images flashed through his mind. None of them were good. He cleared his throat, and he noticed the way Evie startled. “No, he’s not here.” The word ‘yet’ was on the tip of his tongue, but in a rare moment of clarity, he understood that that would be unhelpful. Whether Bill would return was scarily up in the air, but Evie did not need to know that at present.

He watched her body visibly relax. Ford, on the other hand, was still visibly tense, on edge at the notion that she’d pry further. She didn’t.

However, there was one thing he did need to know. “I’m afraid I don’t remember much. Did I hurt you?” The question came out of his mouth the same way everything did. Unemotional. Detached. A question asked purely in pursuit of knowledge. But he wasn’t so sure that was why he asked, actually.

“No, no, you…,” Evie swallowed. “... he ,” she corrected, looking to Ford to make sure she used the correct pronoun. He. Not it. The monster was a person, and it was not Ford. The monster was a person, and it was not Ford. The monster was a person, and it was not Ford . “He tried to. I didn’t let him, of course.” She smirked.

“In any case, whatever I did - it was not of my own will. This being is capable of unimaginable things, has unimaginable power. He had possession of my body when-”

“I know. I mean, I don’t know. But I knew it wasn’t you because you would never hurt me,” Evie shrugged. She came to terms with what happened a long time ago. With confirmation that the threat was gone, that the monster was gone, she could hardly be bothered by it now.

Ford felt his heart thaw for the first time in a long time. After all these years, after all that happened, after he gave her the cold shoulder for giving him his life back, Evie still trusted him. After his own two hands clawed through the walls to get at her, this miraculously small being trusted him . Without thinking much about it, he poked her lightly in the side. She looked up at him in surprise, and he gave her a small smile. He hoped she understood what it meant.

She did. A poke from a giant was always jarring, no matter how many times it happened. It was always stronger than they thought too, rocking her off balance. But when she saw his smile, all the confusion melted away. He was back. They were back.

[illbisexual]

summer, please end quickly stay forever!

[flop girl summer ocs]

"Youve been here for four days," Blair sighs, as she stands in in the middle of her cabin. The girls surrounding her look down at the floor. "I told you before we even came in here, do not write on the bedposts. So far, I've seen a list of hot people from cabin four, you've been writing mean stuff about other campers, and Megan, I know it was you that wrote ally sucks on the doorframe." The camper in question, a blonde, second year camper, Megan Stanley, looks a bit guilty. "I know ally can be boring, trust me, I've known her longer than you have.. but you've barely met the woman! Give her a chance, will you?" Blaire puts her hands on her hips. Megan gives a sheepish im sorry under her breath, before the redheaded counselor announces that everybody can do what they want until dinner time. A few of the girls file out and head for the main lodge, some head in the direction of the lake and others leave to meet with other people from different cabins. A couple girls sit in the cabin anyway, as blaire leaves. She steps out the cabin and into the outside world, as her eyes scan the surrounding area. Kids are playing with a Frisbee, some are bugging Andrea as she seems to head for the auditorium, some kids are seemingly mumbling to themselves as they climb out the pool, a stern looking ally pointing as if to shoo them away. She huffs with laughter, as she makes her way over to the radio shack.

"Out!" Ally calls. "I warned you! I told you, no diving in, or you're getting kicked out for the rest of the day!" She'd warned them three times. Infact, she had stated they had a first warning, second warning, and their third warning meant they had to go. The campers shes kicking out the pool like upset, rolling their eyes and mumbling as they grab their towels and start walking back to the cabins. Ally shakes her head, and at the same time, she heard a voice from behind her, with that signature accent. "Bit harsh, no?" Its Amy, nikki not far behind her, and kaylee trailing behind them. They're all in swimsuits, clearly having come to enjoy the pool. "Dont you have jobs to be doing? You know, the ones that Mr Hackett pays you all to do?" The lifeguard raises an eyebrow. Kaylee steps forward, putting one hand on Amy's shoulder, as the other grabs nikki's wrist and yanks her forward. "We're just having some fun before dinner, Ally, no need to worry. My dad said it was fine." Kaylee smiles. Ally rolls her eyes, before she gestures to the pool and heads back to her post, as the other three girls all head into the pool.

Milo sits in the designated music cabin, surrounded by guitars hanging on walls, wires scattered around the place, and keyboards lined against the wall. Meanwhile, Mila has a camera in her hand as she snaps pictures. She'd been taking a couple over the course of each day of the different cabins, scenic views, campers having fun, counselor drama (which, an argument had already sparked between Ally and Andrea, and mila had been quick to snap pictures of the girls shouting at eachother!) "Milo," mila speaks up, as she points the camera at her fellow counselor. "Smile for the camera, dear musician," she teases, watching milo fluster and try to pose. She snaps the picture, and it comes out.. Good enough. It shows Milo sitting, guitar on his lap, and a deer-like look on his face as he stares at the camera. "Hm. Maybe you should've became a model!" Mila teases, watching milo's cheeks become red as he tries to go back to playing the guitar.

"Yes! Exactly what I'm looking for!" Andrea exclaims, clapping her hands as she watches the two campers on stage bow. In her most recent play, a dramatic one, about two best friends falling out and eventually coming back together, she knew exactly what type of person she was looking for. "You, my darlings, are the perfect people for the roles." The two girls on stage smile excitedly, both saying a happy "thank you, andrea" to the counselor before they skip off. The rest of the characters had been casted, and with that, the auditions were closed and Andrea could rest. She huffs, settling into one of the chairs in the audience. She watches the two campers, and a few others, head out the doors and outside. She leans her head back, rubbing her eyes. She heard the door close, but she also hears a voice. "I assume you've got your dream cast for your play?" Its an amused one, and as Andrea sits up and whips her head around, her eyes land on cole, the nature guide. He has a smile on his face, his sunglasses resting on his head, his jacket held loosely in his left hand, his right hand on his hip. "Yes, I have, thank you prince of nature." Andrea pushes herself out of her chair. She goes to say something else, before she hears a voice crackle over the speakers around camp. Its barely audible, since they're inside, but Cole helpfully opens the door to make it easier to hear. "Campers and counselors, I hate to break it to you, but its time for dinner! Make your way to the main lodge, preferably wearing clothes instead of a wet bathing suit, because someone has already slipped on the water some of you guys left behind." Spoiler alert, the one who had slipped was caleb. Before the speakers turn off, you can hear another voice in the radio shack say something that sounds like "why" before theyre cut off. That must be caleb, who is sitting in the radio shack with blaire as per usual. "Come on then, princess of drama," Cole smiles as he heads out the auditorium doors, Andrea rolling her eyes before she heads out after him.

[taytrashmouth]

okay okay stanley barber x metal head reader ❤️❤️❤️ please i need some kinda hcs or something love your work babes

Love this idea!!! Thanks so much and I hope you enjoy!

Stanley barber x metal head reader

TW: brief mentions of drugs sex and porn, use of girlfriend, hickeys

In Stanley’s basement, pretty much everything goes. Drugs, fine. Sex, fine. Porn, fine. You, totally fine.

But the wonder that was Stanley barbers basement had never been exposed to metal, heavy metal. So here you were, lying on the carpet with Stanley listening to black sabbath and Metallica.

He would nod his head or move his foot to the beat every once in a while but he didn’t seem to love it like you did. It was okay, it’s not like you were dating him because he was a metal head. In fact you kind of liked that you were polar opposites.

You lifted onto your elbow to look at him, dark hair falling into your eyes. “What do you think?” You asked as he mimicked your position, now facing each other.

He looked at you in awe, forever lucky to have you as his girlfriend. He examined your eyeliner that made your y/e/c eyes pop.

“It’s different. I like the guitar in the one about the girl who likes plants.”

“Huh?” You looked at him with utter confusion.

He started to hum the tune, head banging as he sung and you began to laugh.

“Sweet leaf?” You fell onto your back laughing.

“Bingo.” He smiled down at you.

“You know you’re like my favourite person on earth right?” Stan stated, just above a whisper but it’s so much meaning behind his words.

Red blush crawled to your cheeks and you hid your face in your hands. Smiling from ear to ear. “You’re my favourite boy in the world.” You added as you lowered your hands.

He looked only half offended, jokingly clutching his chest. “who’s your favourite girl?” He questioned.

“Joan Jett babe.” You shrugged.

“Ah, I can’t compete with her! She’s like a god to you.” Stan smiled.

“Nothing I can do.” You joked back.

“You’ll have to repay me, I guess.”

“I guess so.” You smiled wider.

“You should start working off your debt now” Stan added pretending to look at files.

“Is that so?

“Yeah, y/n/n” he leaned down and your lips met his.

You moved perfectly in sink pulling him into you to deepen the kiss. Ozzy seemed to fade in the background, an afterthought. You grabbed Stan’s shoulders and rolled him under you, straddling him now. Long dark hair falling to your side.

As you pulled apart for air, both breathless Stan held himself up on his elbows, with you still on his lap.

“Blood witch is better.” He panted.

“Shut up.” You shoved him back down, smiling despite yourself and continuing your heated make out session.

What can you say opposites attract.

[sovengardeswag]

The Pines Files

After the events of Weirdmaggeddon, Dipper and Mabel are contacted by the SCP foundation and join the ranks. The adventure never ended, it just took a different turn. And now, years later, they're back to Gravity Falls, aka SCP-████. And it is up to them to investigate the ever-growing mystery behind the town and protect the most dangerous and important SCPs there are and face their past.

Chapter 3: Business as Usual

Dinner had not been the awkward, miserable, and accusatory event that Dipper’s anxiety had convinced him it would be. In fact, it was downright pleasant. The places to eat in Gravity Falls weren’t exactly endless, even with expansion, but the town certainly had new places at least, including a Cheesecake Warehouse. The tacky Greco-Roman-Egyptian-80’s ostentatiousness of the place was almost a comfort after the last five years of his dingy [redacted] apartment or the site-19 cafeteria. He took a breath of the restaurant air and went up to the hostess, quickly tucking in his dress-shirt when he noticed it was displaced. “Uh, hi, I’m here to meet up with a party of 4. It would be under the name Pines?”

The young woman looked up from her computer then, asking Dipper, “For 6 o’clock, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Right this way, sir,” She led Dipper to where Mabel and his grunkles were waiting, Mabel’s charm bracelet jingling as she waved to him, “Dipper! You made it!”

“Course I did! I’m not a flake.” Dipper sat down, taking a menu from the hostess and flipping through the unreasonable number of pages. “Did you guys order yet?”

“Nah, we just got here,” said Stan.

“That’s good. I got kind of turned around on the way here, it’s been a while, ya know?”

“No need to apologize, Stanley and I almost got lost as well. It didn’t help that he tried to find us a shortcut.”

“I’m telling you, Sixer, it would have worked if someone hadn’t started building a bunch of traffic lanes there.

Dipper couldn’t help but laugh a little, it seemed nothing changed with these two. “Was the construction near the lake?”

“Yeah, it was, something about making it easier to go there or something.”

“Speaking of water,” Mabel added, grabbing a piece of pumpernickel from the basket. “How was this year’s trip? I wanna hear everything! How was Armand? Was it the tearful, historical romance style reunion I’m thinking of?”

“Actually, Stanley almost rammed us into a rocky island off the coast of California.”

“Oh, come on, I said I was sorry!”

“It’s not judgment, Stanley, no one can resist a siren song and Armand had everyone stop when he realized it was me.”

“Made them stop? Is he their king or something?” Dipper asked out of curiosity.

Ford clarified, “No, not a king. Sirens operate as fully autonomous anarcho-communes-”

Stan then interjected, “Basically, they’re hippies and it was his ex’s turn with the conch.”

“Well, I think it’s romantic that he recognized you after all this ti- Dipper are you seriously taking notes?”

“No," Dipper lied, quickly putting his pen and notepad back in his pocket. Stan laughed at his embarrassment before he admitted, "Sorry, it’s kind of hard to turn off the whole, ‘take notes on everything and anything weird,’ mentality.”

“Nah kid, it’s fine, you’ve been doing this as long as I’ve known you. Of course, you’re gonna take notes on mermaids.”

“Sirens, Stanley.”

“He gets my point.”

Dipper took his notepad and pen back out of his pocket, clicking the pen before asking, “Can you tell me about the anarcho-communes? Is that universal among sirens or just Armand’s community?”

“Is everyone ready to order?” Interrupted the waiter right on time.

Dipper set his notepad aside, quickly looking over the drinks menu, “Uh, yeah, I’ll have the,” he squinted, “the super-skinny-you’ll-forget-you-had-kids margarita?”

“And I’ll have a pitt-cola please,” added Mabel.

“And two beers for us,” Ford finished off, the waiter nodding and leaving.

“Still not drinking, Pumpkin?”

“Yeah, absolutely not. Besides, someone’s gotta be the designated driver around here.”

“You got me there.”

And just like that, things were almost, well, normal. To say he felt 12 again would be a lie but what it did remind Dipper of was being 17 and about to go off to college, like this kind of thing would last forever, even if his knees hurt sometimes now. He enjoyed his oversized meal and was just allowed to feel happy. He didn’t even mention work, it came up when Ford mentioned it. “By the way, Dipper, are you going to be working with Dr. Clef?”

“I don’t know, why?”

“Oh, no reason. I just met him a few times when he worked for the GOC. He would have been very young at the time, I’m not sure if he would remember me.”

“I’ll say hi if I see him.”

Mabel butted in then, saying, “And if Dipper doesn’t see him but I do, I’ll say it.”

~

The next morning, Mason headed straight to work. It was almost surprising how quickly he adjusted back to routine. When he arrived at the staff room to await his assignment, he even found that he was early, knowing the town like the back of his hand, minus that little hiccup from yesterday. With people mostly just milling around the staffroom and not sure what else to do until assignments were handed out, he scrolled through his phone, checking the comments on his neglected YouTube channel. He almost didn’t notice that someone said something to him. “Oh, sorry, what was that?”

The person who spoke to him was a woman of about 25. “I asked if you’re a local,” she said.

“Uh, no, not really, I’m from California. I used to spend summers here though. Why?”

“Oh, you just seemed like you were,” she clarified. “I’m new and almost got lost on the way here. I should have expected it but this town’s layout is kind of weird.”

“Eh, you’ll get used to it. To tell you the truth, this is my first day at this facility. I was transferred from site-19, so we’re both having a first day.”

“Wow, really? I wish my first assignment was there. I read through some of the containment procedures, it seems like some of the objects there would be amazing to work with."

“Some of them can be. Others are just awful. They can’t all be coffee machines that give you dragon’s blood.”

“True, but still- “

It was then that attention was called to the front of the staff room by a member of HR, “Alright everyone, eyes up here! Since everyone’s new here, I’ll speak nice and clear, but I’ll only call your name and department once. If you miss me, check your employee portal within the next 15 minutes. If you mess that up, then I don’t know what to tell you. Get a job somewhere else. Preferably someplace you don’t have to pay attention.” And just like that, he started, “Anderson, Gnome Relations.”

Mason made a face at the harshness of it all. It wasn’t like they were D-class who couldn’t be trusted. But as soon as the thought crossed his mind, the image of the D-class choking on his own blood forced itself forward, and he got a sinking feeling in his stomach. He put his phone back in his pocket and just stood there, waiting with his own thoughts. Then, he was called, “Pines, Special Projects!”

Now, that got Mason’s attention. He knew that there was some sort of project here being worked on, as the woman he had been speaking to had been called to special projects too, but he hadn’t been told about anything specific he was working on. Only that he was now a general researcher. Either way, he went up to the HR rep and grabbed his assignment sheet. There it was, clear as day, special project headed by Dr. Jack Bright. Lab number 586. But he still wondered what this project was about. With there being only one way to find out, he headed to lab 586 as fast as he could.

When he arrived, he found that he was the last one there. He also noticed that, with the exception of a dark-haired man wearing an amulet, he had seen everyone else in the staff room, but it was only the young woman who had talked to him.

It was Dr. Bright, for who else would be wearing that amulet, who greeted him first. “Ah, there’s the man of the hour. It’s good to meet you, Dr. Pines.” He shook Mason’s hand.

Dr. Bright then looked to the other researchers, “Ok, now that everyone’s here, let’s establish our specialties.”

Mason looked to the other researchers, two women, and one man. The middle-aged woman spoke first, “Lucia Gonzalez, specialist in magical barriers.”

The man spoke next, “Peter Cheng, cryptozoologist.”

And lastly, “Katie Benson, forcefield engineer.”

And Mason finally added, “Mason Pines, specialty in general anomalies.”

Dr. Bright corrected him, “Actually, that’s not why you’re here.”

“Huh?”

“You’re here because you’re our leading most expert in SCP-[REDACTED].”

“Wait, really?”

Bright nodded, “Of course. None of the other researchers here are locals and everyone who was there during; what’d you call it in your research? Weirdmaggedon? Transferred out, retired, or quit. So that leaves you.”

“Oh, huh.” Mason had a realization about their group. A cryptozoologist, an engineer, and a specialist in magical barriers. “I’m guessing our work has to do with the containment barrier.”

“Exactly!” Bright then addressed the team as a whole. “Ladies and gentleman, we are trying to replicate the barrier that prevents escape from this site. This will make containment breaches a nigh impossibility.”

While Dr. Gonzalez and Dr. Chen looked impressed and Katie looked like she’d been told she was going to be crowned queen of the elves and worshipped for all her days, Mason had a question. “Um, Dr. Bright, not to be rude or anything but I already see a problem. The barrier isn’t exactly picky. If we make one, anomalous staff won’t be able to leave the site.”

“And that’s why this is a research project and not a building project. Part of our job here is figuring out how to make it selective. Good thinking though.”

Mason could certainly understand that. Magic barriers like the one around Gravity Falls were feasible, if finicky, and forcefields were practically child’s play in this line of work. A selective magical barrier that could be activated at any site? That would be quite a feat. And it seemed his colleagues agreed, as Katie piped up, “Where do we start?”

“We need to review literature and footage first. I have the physical files over there,” he pointed to a box on one of the tables, “and video footage should have been sent to your secure portal by now. Don’t hesitate to tell me if we need anything else.”

Mason headed straight to the case files, taking out the first one he saw. He knew that coming to Gravity Falls would be the change of pace he needed. And would you look at that, the first file was labeled June 1st, 2012.

It was an incident in which a gnome seemingly attempted to build a tunnel under the town in order to leave for some unknown purpose. Apparently, the little guy tried for days before giving up. If he had to guess from the timeline though, he was probably heading out to look for a queen. Mason called out to Dr. Bright, who was looking over footage on his laptop and taking notes, “Hey, is there any way for me to edit these incident reports?”

Dr. Bright paused his video and told him, “You’re gonna have to put in a request in the foundation portal. But some of these aren’t on the staff wiki so you’ll have to retype them.”

“Damn,” he wrote down what he knew in his notes instead. He’d have to make that request later. But this report at least told him something. The barrier went below the town. “Do we know how deep the barrier goes?”

Dr. Hernandez looked up from her own file, “What do you mean deep?”

“A gnome tried to get out in the early 2010s by tunneling but couldn’t. File says he tried to use a drill made out of sticks, acorn bits, and unicorn horn shed. Obviously, it didn’t work but it means the barrier extends underground.”

Katie looked up, questioning, “Wait, acorn bits?”

She went unaddressed as Dipper went on to say, “The question is though, how far down does it go? And is there a floor like a fish tank?”

“Shit, you’re right,” Bright stopped watching his video entirely and went to the files, sorting through them, “Everyone, look through the files about the amber dinosaurs. It could be that the floor could be down the mineshaft.”

Dr. Chen began furiously typing at his laptop then, knowing exactly which file to access. “Hold on, I’ve got it. It’s under SCP-[REDACTED]-118. The mine goes to 1500 meters and there has never been digging from anomalies at the maximum depth, but that could be due to a lack of food.

Katie then pointed out, “Shouldn’t we start with the ship? I mean, it might be the source of the barrier, so it makes the most sense to start checking there.”

“That’s a good point. So that gives us two options for the initial study. Either we can go to the crash site or we can go see the bottom of the mineshaft.”

“Why not both,” asked Mason. “I mean, even if we can find a definitive answer at only one site, it can be worth checking to see the limits of the barrier at two different points.”

“Well, that settles it then. We’ve got some field trips to plan. I say we start with the crash site, rule out that possibility and maybe see if we can find any working equipment, especially anything that might be generating a barrier. Then we can test the mineshaft.”

Barely an hour in and Mason had already arranged two fieldtrips for this little project. As he smiled to himself, he thought that he was in for a good time.

~

Agent Mabel Pines was not having a good time. She was almost late to her shift after Baby escaped her house and had to be wrangled back inside. Then she was late when someone’s tractor got stuck in the middle of the road. On top of that, today was supposed to be boring. As a member of MTF team Mu-Alpha-Epsilon, which specialized in the maintenance of magical creatures, one would think Mabel would be spending all her time wrangling something but alas, that was not the case. Today was contraband day, meaning she would have to go through boxes and boxes of gnome hats and goblin claws and all manner of magical body parts both antique and contemporary. Check if it was the real thing or a forgery and report accordingly for further action. And she was supposed to do that all day. As she ran into the contraband room, wearing a sparkly blue sweater over a white work blouse and a black pencil skirt, she looked around to make sure no one noticed her lateness. Luckily, no one did so she set to it, looking through the closest box. Unicorn horns. Great.

Unicorn horns were always a huge pain in the ass. Their similarity to narwhal tusks made them hard to check visually. They weren’t allowed to bring headphones into the contraband room, so that made audio inspection a tedious option, especially since they had to be careful to not damage the horns. She already felt like she was developing brain fog. And then her superior walked over, and she sighed. “Look, Reg, I’m sorry for being late, it won’t happen again.”

“Actually, I didn’t notice you were late,” said Reg. “You’re needed in the field today. Dr. Clef wants your expertise for a project in the unicorn grove.”

Expertise? Mabel had never heard it called that before. However, any excuse was a good excuse to avoid contraband day. She stood up and told him, “Of course, I’ll go change into my tactical gear right now.” And with that, she dropped the unicorn horn she was inspecting and headed straight to her locker.

While tactical armor was meant to be stealthy in the dark, the conditions of Mabel’s contract allowed a certain level of customization that wasn’t available to other MTF agents. She of course had a small American flag patch as required for identification purposes, but her helmet was decorated with purple swirls like fog or smoke. On the straps of her uniform, she also had various charms and pins of pigs and cats, including a custom tabaxi charm she would vehemently deny was a tabaxi.

Mabel didn’t know many of the doctors, just because she wasn’t in contact with them very often. So the surprise on Clef’s face when he saw the state of her tactical gear was expected. “Agent Pines?”

Mabel took his hand and shook it, telling him, “Yep, and you must be Dr. Clef. Don’t mind all the knick-knacks, we’re not on a stealth mission, so they won’t be a bother. My great uncle Stanford says hello by the way. You might have met him when you were in the GOC?”

Clef looked at Reg and Reg said, “Special contract.”

“Ah, that explains the decals." He turned his attention back to Mabel and said, “I think I’ve met him, yes. Tell him I said hello back. But I have to know, your file said you’ve had experience with these unicorns. How'd you handle that as a little girl?”

“Oh, it was awful. These unicorns are complete jerks.”

Reg nodded, concurring, "I've never dealt with a unicorn who wasn't at least a little hostile."

"I can only imagine. Granted, I've never dealt with one outside of combat before." But then, it occurred to him, "You said this wasn't a stealth mission. How are we going to get the hair then?"

"I did say that, I'll explain on the way there. Later Reg." Mabel claimed the driver's seat, Celf taking the passenger seat while Reg stayed behind. Staying true to her word, Mabel explained the incident from 2012, not finishing the story until they reached the edge of the woods.

"So the plan is to basically beat some unicorns into submission?"

"No, no, I'm going to threaten some unicorns into submission. I won't start punching unless they refuse to help. And you can join if you want, Doc."

"Thanks?"

With that, the two went into the woods together. walking paths Mabel had walked a million times. When they reached the deepest part, Dr. Clef played a recording of the druid's chant from a tape and the grove opened up to them, revealing the great waterfall and an ever-present rainbow. The moment they stepped in, Agent Pines and Dr. Clef heard a whinny and the sound of hooves on grass. Before them stood a beautiful, powder blue unicorn, resplendent in the sun.

She then began to speak, "I am Celestabellebethabelle, the last of the unicorns. What brings you here, brave advent,-" She then recognized Mabel, "-oh, it's you again. What do you want?"

"Same thing as last time, lady, we need hair."

"Are you kidding me?" She stamped her hoof as she said it. "You beat me and my friends half to death, make off with my treasure, rip my hair out, and expect me to give you more? Just like that?"

"I figured you'd be less of a dillweed about it if anything."

Dr. Clef then stepped in, "Agent Pines, if I may." He then approached the unicorn, telling her, "Look, I understand your history with my colleague is tumultuous, to say the least, but it's important that we have unicorn hair. World ending importance."

"So you say, Doctor, but I can see that you are not pure of heart. Your soul lurches with the weight of your sins and your lecherous nature. Why should I trust you?"

"That's not gonna work on him. Look, we just need it for a barrier and we're not leaving without it. Now, I can either just give you a haircut and go or we can fight again. It's up to you, just keep in mind that I'm a grown adult now."

Now, Celestabellebethabelle was cruel, she was unkind, a poor excuse for a unicorn, an already very arrogant species, but she wasn't stupid. It would be very easy for Mabel, who had only grown stronger with age and was in her prime, to beat her again. She also had a weapon this time and unicorns were not so endangered that her presence would be missed. She could see it now, her hair used for that barrier, her blood made into potions of youth, her hooves boiled down into magical glue, her horn made into an undying MP3 player. With little choice, she thus lay down on her legs, telling Mabel, "Fine you can take my hair. If you yank, I'll gore you. And don't let him touch me, I don't want some freak giving me a bad haircut."

Clef made a face at that but Mabel paid it no mind as she told the unicorn, "Don't worry, I won't give you a bad haircut."

She took a pair of scissors out of Clef's bag as well as some plastic garbage bags and knelt down to cut. She knew it would be harder to keep her promise with dry hair but she didn't let that deter her. Dr. Clef said they needed lots of the stuff, so she took five inches of the unicorn's mane, the proud beast huffing and muttering the whole time. At one point, she told Mabel, "You know there really was a time when we could sense if someone was pure of heart."

"Yeah, I've heard."

"Do you know why we lost that ability?"

"I'm guessing it's because you started lying to little girls." Mabel closed her scissors rather audibly at that.

"No, it's because we stopped being approached. Magic is use it or lose it and when humans don't care about being pure of heart, why use it? What I'm saying is that it was basically your own fault that I was mean to you."

Mabel then held the scissors to the very root of the unicorn's fine hair, "Oh no, looks like my hand slipped." She then cut off a lock of hair and added it to the already copious pile.

Celestabellabethabelle screamed in fright, "Alright! I'm sorry that I was a bitch!"

Mabel then went back to giving a normal haircut, "You sure were."

She then finished up, wrapping the unicorn hair in itself as neatly as she could and putting it into the bags. As soon as Mabel let go, the unicorn ran to check her mane in the lake. It was certainly a lot shorter but that wasn't a bad thing. She looked as fashionable as any dressage horse. She couldn't even see where Mabel had cut off a whole lock. "This is acceptable. Now get out."

"Wouldn't have it any other way." With that, she and Clef left the grove. The walk back was slower with each of them holding a bag of unicorn hair. Not one to let the opportunity for conversation to slip by, Mabel told Clef, "Sorry she called you a freak."

"It's alright, I've been called worse and sometimes even deserved it."

"She's not very creative."

"You know, I haven't read up on the old unicorn files, was there ever a time they could read someone's heart?"

"Nah, they couldn't. I just wanted to see where she was going with that. You never really know how they'll react when they're caught in a lie, so it's best to keep them talking until you can turn it around on them."

"Well, that's quite a strategy, I suppose that's why Agent Grey recommended you."

"Maybe, but it's probably just because I know the place best." She looked at his bag and a thought occurred to her, "So, I know what unicorn hair is used for and that I'm not supposed to ask for specifics but do you mind telling a lady if the reason for doing this is classified?"

"Oh no, I can share some details. We have an object being brought in from another site. It is imperative that we not only bring it but that it's as safe as possible. It's alive and non hostile and I'll leave it at that."

"The non-hostile part is doing a lot of heavy lifting there."

"Maybe so, but that's still a lot of possibilities."

"You got me there." She then looked at her watch. That haircut had taken longer than she thought it would. "Well, it's lunchtime. Do you want to join me?"

"Oh, no thanks. I need to get started on the barrier right away. You can drop me off back at the site."

Mabel shrugged, "Suit yourself. Just remember to eat, Doc."

"Thank you for the concern, I'll be fine though."

With that, they got back to base and the day went on as normal. Or as normal as any day could be. Honestly, anything was better than sorting through contraband. When she left, she didn't go home. Not straight away at least. She first went to Dipper's apartment, walking straight in, "Dipper, you won't believe the- what are you doing?"

Dipper was standing over his tank with a fishbowl in one hand and a net in the other submerged and cornering the terrified axolotl that was Bill. Dipper must have been at it since he got home from work, as he was still wearing a lab coat.

Bill used Dipper's surprise as an excuse to swim into his hide, Dipper explaining. "I needed to feed him and my fish and don't trust him. That can wait though, what's up?"

"I had a very interesting day is what happened. They're building an anti-possession field."

"What?" Bill and Dipper said this in unison, the axolotl sticking his head out of his Aztec pyramid. Only Dipper heard the former demon's wary tone, ignoring it in favor of his own curiosity. "Did they say what it was for?"

"Dr. Clef said they were transporting someone or something friendly to the Gravity Falls site and wasn't at liberty to say anymore, but I think the fact that it's friendly says enough."

"What do you think it is?"

"I think it's SCP-166."

"I kind of doubt that. She's not exactly easy to move. You need to remember I worked at site 19 longer than you. I passed her room a million times and that thing is like a vault. Plus, we've both read her file. They'd have to move her Oregon Trail style. Besides, are you even at liberty to openly discuss this with me?"

"It's not classified if it's just speculation and he gave me those details at least. Besides, who else could it be?"

"I don't know but think of it this way, has she ever been at risk of possession before?"

"He's got a point, shooting star. Say what you will about nuns, they can teach a girl a thing or two about mental fortitude."

"See, even Bill agrees with me."

"Are you seriously listening to Bill right now?"

"No, I just know I'm right. Anyways, is that the only reason you're here?"

"A little, but I also wanted to see how your first day was."

"Oh, it was great, I'm working on a project. Details are classified though."

Mabel groaned, "Seriously? Classified on your first day?"

"Yeah, on my first day." He went back to trying to catch Bill, telling Mabel, "All I can say is that it's incredibly important and that there's a reason I'm in Gravity Falls for it."

Mabek huffed but then, she got an idea, "Do you want to play D, D, and more D tomorrow?"

Dipper had finally gotten the screaming and squirming axolotl into the bowl at that point. He looked at Mabel, regarding her carefully before asking, "One-off or campaign?"

"One-off, you're the DM."

"Deal."

"What?" Bill stuck his head out of the bowl as he asked this, truly confused now. He didn't even pay attention to the delicious blood worms Dipper dropped into the bowl. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"That's a need-to-know basis and you don't need to know."

"Oh, come on!"

Previous

Next

AO3 Link

[vintagelasvegas]

The Howard Hughes Green House.

Rendering, created in 2025 / Photo c. 2022

The Green House: The History Behind a Howard Hughes Enigma in Las Vegas (Clark County Museum)

The home was on property owned by James "Jimmie" Fulcher and Murray Wollman, and may have been built circa '49-'50 as a model home for a planned development. The first owner on record with Clark County's Assessor's office is "Leasehold Funding, Inc." in '51, however the house appears in photos & records from 1950.

The house was leased by Howard Hughes in ‘53, briefly used as an office, and sealed until his death. It remains in this location.

Paul Winn, former Hughes exec., to Vintage Las Vegas:

“Hughes used the house as an office during the daytime when he was in Vegas in ‘53, working from there when he established the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Hughes never watched any movies in this house, and he never entertained any famous ladies here either.” “I was Executive Assistant to Bill Gay, later President of Summa Corporation. Bill Gay sealed up the house with tape. After [Hughes Chief Exec.] Robert Maheu was removed from power I came to Vegas many times with Bill; he and I checked the green house frequently to make sure it had not been broken into. I was the first one in this house after the death of Hughes. I made an inventory of the contents, which was not a lot. Randy Hunter and I broke up the concrete floor in one room because a metal detector indicated something which we thought might be a safe - it was not. I know a great deal about the history of this house and my signature is on the deed when it was sold to Landmark Communications.” “I worked for years with Kay Glenn, who was in charge of Hughes’ Operations Office. Kay was here in Vegas with Hughes during the ‘53 period when he worked from the green house. Kay has told me many times that Hughes never spent a night in the green house. He maintained a suite at the Flamingo at that time. The green house was leased from the Fulchers [James S. and Beatrice Fulcher], along with some adjacent property. Summa Corporation later purchased the Fulcher property. I sold the remainder of the Fulcher property to Stanley Korman, who built the Bank of America building on Convention Center Drive.”

Workers from Hughes Aircraft installed a large air conditioning unit next to the house, according to Winn. When the unit was removed it unclear, and the aerial photos are not clear enough to show the unit.

KLAS-TV was bought by Hughes in '68. The green house property was also bought in '68 under the name of Hughes employee Loyd Shields. KLAS later relocated its transmitter to Black Mountain, and in the mid 70s relocated the station itself, building a new facility on the 3-acre site shared with the green house. Landmark Communications purchased KLAS-TV from Hughes heirs in '78. The house came with the station.

View from Desert Inn's Sky Room, Apr. '50, facing northeast. The house is visible (barely) in the distance behind the row of trees. Photo by J. R. Eyerman.

High altitude photos from 7/3/50 (USGS) and 2024 (Airbus/Google Earth), with the green house highlighted. There was an appraisal of the home dated 8/8/50, filed in the Elmo C. Bruner Architectural and Real Estate Appraisal Records (MS-00177), UNLV Special Collections & Archives.

2/19/59 – KLAS, Bali Hai Motel, Blair House.  Kelly-Holiday Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.

Sources include: Elmo C. Bruner Architectural and Real Estate Appraisal Records (MS-00177), UNLV Special Collections & Archives; KLAS opens headquarters. Review-Journal, 10/22/76; Jack Breger. Summa sells KLAS-TV. Review-Journal, 2/7/78 p1; Interview with Paul Winn, 2022 and 2025.

Updated 6/18/2025

[knotfodder]

-

[mitochondriaandbunnies]

You Should Watch Wiseguy:

The show that changed the face of television while no one was paying attention

If you've ever watched and enjoyed anything that gets tossed around as “prestige television—”  you know what I’m talking about— long form narratives, high stakes, actors with something to prove— shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, etc.— you have Wiseguy to thank. While largely forgotten by mainstream audiences (for a variety of reasons, including sheer lack of availability), Wiseguy was one of the first non-soap-opera shows with a fully serialized story— one that expected you to see every episode, in order. When it began airing in September of 1987, really the only other thing on TV like it was Michael Mann’s Crime Story (also worth a watch), and Crime Story would be canceled before Wiseguy even hit its second season.

Writers, actors, and industry types of all kinds cite Wiseguy as a major influence— Vince Gilligan and Tom Schnauz credit watching Wiseguy in the 80’s as why they cast Jonathan Banks as Mike— Chris Carter hired writers from Wiseguy when he started the X-Files— actors like Stanley Tucci made their names on the show— and hell, David Chase wrote an angry letter to the New York Times claiming he was absolutely under no circumstances at all influenced by Wiseguy ever, which feels like the kind of thing you don’t need to write a letter about if it’s true. 

Of course, just because something is influential doesn’t mean it’s good. 

Wiseguy is really damn good.

Much like Miami Vice (and some of the later shows that took influence from Wiseguy), Wiseguy takes the position that there’s very little difference between criminals and the police, and that the justice system is wildly ill-equipped to create justice. Mafia movie blood, with all its inherent moral ambiguity, runs through Wiseguy’s veins, and then after episode nine, it asks you to think about how that blood would pump in a different milieu— corporate espionage and the destabilization of the global south by American capitalists, insular rural politics and the easy rise of small-time dictators, congressional politics and Twelve-Angry-Men-worthy courtroom drama, the music industry and the cutthroat disposal of talented young people. Money and power structures are always suspect, and good-hearted tough guy lead Vinnie is constantly torn between doing his job, doing the right thing, and doing the thing that makes sense to him emotionally.

The show is heartfelt, tense, funny, and above all else, incredibly human. The characters behave irrationally— they self-sabotage, they struggle with moral decisions, they lash out at people they care about— because they’re people, not plot devices. Little things will come back to haunt them, often many episodes later, in believable and sometimes gutting—but rarely shocking— ways. Despite this realism, and a deep sense of cynicism about our institutions, Wiseguy never falls into the trap of wallowing in grim bleakness. The writers and the actors clearly believe in people— it’s a show that says— ‘yeah, the world sucks. So how do we keep going, together?’ The characters are lovable not because they’re all good, but because you feel like you could know them, with realistic flaws and foibles and senses of humor. Sometimes it’s a little silly, and sometimes it’s a little melodramatic— but it works, because sometimes that’s how real life is, too.

Wiseguy is four (well. three and a half) seasons [cross out— and a terrible TV movie that disregards canon], and is notably divided into 4-11 episode arcs within those seasons, and occasional “breather” episodes between arcs. It’s actually a brilliant bit of plotting that I wish more shows would do today— it allows for overarching narratives and real stakes without running into DBZ-like “the next threat has to be BIGGER and MORE DANGEROUS” power level bullshittery that’s common to a lot of long running serialized shows. One of my favorite aspects of this design is that the cast partially rotates every few episodes, but the show still expects you to remember what was going on with the characters from the previous arcs— because they often return later in unexpected and narratively satisfying ways.

The three characters that remain more-or-less consistent throughout the show are Vinnie Terranova, an undercover agent for the Organized Crime Bureau, Frank McPike, his handler, and Dan “Lifeguard” Burroughs, the OCB call-center operator who gives Vinnie field instructions. 

Vinnie Terranova is just on the border of thirty when the series begins, a gregarious kid-from-the-neighborhood, just out of a cover-establishing 18-month stint in prison. He is a bundle of contradictions— quick to fall but slow to trust, a practicing Catholic who chose a job in the field of lying and murder, a 50’s hood irritated by bigotry. Vinnie is both far smarter and more sensitive than anyone gives him credit for, which is both his greatest strength and his fatal flaw— empathetic undercover agents burn out fast. He spends a surprising amount of the series trying and failing to quit his job. He has a marshmallow center, a steel-trap mind, and the general affect of your cousin who dropped out of college to marry his pregnant high school sweetheart. He also has no idea that his type is “angry asshole” and keeps being surprised when he falls for them. 

Frank McPike is a curmudgeon's curmudgeon, a career fed with a chip on his shoulder, a fathoms-deep sense of cynicism, and a collapsing marriage. He and Vinnie begin the series at odds, and as you watch the first few episodes, you're going to seriously struggle to believe me when I say that the affection between Frank and Vinnie becomes the absolute thematic and emotional heart of the series. Frank is also a genuine oddball failing to pose as a tough guy; he makes noises, he lurks in strange costumes, and the words he chooses when he’s irritated beggar normal human understanding.

We don’t get to know Dan as quickly or as deeply as we get to know Vinnie and Frank (in fact, he’s introduced as “Mike”), but he’s the man behind the curtain, a guiding moral and emotional star for Vinnie, a talented musician, and a cheerful face with a lot of anger bubbling just below the surface. He offers life advice even as his own home life is in constant meltdown, and loves both Vinnie and Frank with a fierce, sarcastic weariness. Dan is also an amputee, and his disability is portrayed with respect and without pity— a rarity for television even now, but especially in 1988. 

You’ll absolutely fall in love with these three, but one of the things that makes Wiseguy so special is its fantastic supporting cast. The world is fleshed out and lived in, and you get the distinct sense that all the recurring characters have their own lives we don’t get to see off screen. There’s Carlotta— Vinnie’s mother, as contradictory and sharp as her son, Pete— Vinnie’s brother, a progressive basketball-playing priest, Roger Lococco— a killer-for-hire who refers to every person on the planet as Buckwheat, Rudy Aiuppo— an elderly don with the heart of a trickster spirit, and a whole host of others who enter and exit the narrative throughout the arcs of the show. There are also a whole host of wonderful arc-based characters played by incredible actors, journeymen and and famous alike— including turns from Tim Curry, Debbie Harry, Jerry Lewis, Stanley Tucci, Patti D’Arbanville, Stephen Bauer, and Billy Dee Williams. You can tell everyone involved in the show had a fantastic time working on it, and nearly every actor who comes aboard really puts their whole Wisegussy into it gives it their all.

You notice that as I’ve been speaking, the lights have dimmed slightly, and the strains of an organetto have started to play quietly in the background. A man in a rumpled suit is smoking nearby, though you are fairly certain smoking indoors hasn’t been legal in a number of years. I pass you a plate of espresso and biscotti. 

Let’s talk arcs.

The first arc of the show, known as the Steelgrave arc, is a lot of fans’ favorite arc of the show, and for good reason. Vinnie infiltrates a New Jersey mob organization, and gets very, very close* to this man:

Sonny Steelgrave, human Knife Cat, is a complicated man, and Vinnie has complicated feelings about him. He’s very nearly a co-protagonist to Vinnie in this arc, and the show artfully toes the line between condemning him and making it clear that he’s not always entirely wrong. Vinnie’s goal is to get Sonny into prison and take down the entire family— how and whether he achieves this goal is best left unspoiled. Sonny may not have been the first complicated, likable villain on television, but his arc is intense, heart-wrenching, and splendidly morally grey. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that the Steelgrave arc is the best nine hour mob movie ever aired on television.  

*I’m really not kidding about the closeness. There’s an episode where Sonny announces he’s getting married and literally all the other mobsters are like ‘oh, now I understand why Vinnie has been in a bad mood all day.’ They are as close to canonically in love as a federal agent and a mobster have ever been portrayed on screen.

Lest you get Kevin-Spacey-jumpscared, the following arc unfortunately has Kevin Spacey in it. Thankfully he plays a slimy sister-kissing coked-up hypercapitalist, so it’s fairly easy to just hate his character in the same way you hate the actor and move on with your life. 

This arc, the Profitt arc— in which Vinnie is tasked with taking down a wealthy business mogul who is suspected of drug-and-gun-running— is, for many fans, a close second to the Steelgrave arc. It’s an interesting change of tone and locale, and introduces Roger Lococco, who is a really stellar supporting character. Personally, I rank a bunch of other arcs above Profitt, because no matter how much I like Roger, Mel and Susan are bananas, and they wear out their welcome before they exit the narrative. Regardless, it’s a stylish arc— one that rather  kicks truth, justice, and the American way in the teeth— and Mel’s machinations have serious reverberations later in the show. The Roger subplot is also genuinely excellent, and good old Corey Matthews’ Dad plays him with aplomb.

Back home, after trying to quit his job and failing, Vinnie has to deal with a threat with much smaller, but far more personal stakes. A white supremacy group has moved into his neighborhood and is attempting to recruit working-class Italians to their cause, pitting an older immigrant group against a newer one, pitting Catholics against Jews, and pitting a previously “ethnic” group’s newly acquired “whiteness” against people of color. I have mixed feelings about the Pilgrims of Promise/White Supremacy arc, because it’s truly quite good, and it pulls no punches about the kind of people fascists are and prey on, but it’s also exceptionally fucking upsetting that nothing has changed at all since 1988. Literally you could remake this arc word for word today and a) it would be exactly as believable, and b) your show would be immediately boycotted and canceled for being too “woke.” Great writing, great stakes, great character motivation; so, so uncomfortable to watch.

And then Ken Wahl breaks his leg in real life, and they have to replace him for a few weeks. 

The Garment Trade arc starts off pretty promising— Vinnie meets with the son of a clothing manufacturer, they have great (borderline meet-cute) chemistry, it’s a wonderfully New-York-in-the-80’s kind of storyline, Jerry Lewis is there, and I think it’s the only time I’ve ever seen Sukkot represented on TV— and then Vinnie has to leave for the next four episodes because of Wahl’s broken leg. They rewrote the arc on the fly, and considering that, it’s pretty good. Jerry Lewis is still there, and he gives the serious, dramatic performance of a lifetime, and Stanley Tucci chews scenery as The World’s Slimiest Businessman. We meet Vinnie’s childhood bestie, “Mooch,” whose actor, delightfully, starred beside Ken Wahl in 1979’s The Wanderers. My beautiful and talented wife Joan Chen even shows up for an episode. However, all of this is undercut by the lack of Vinnie; his replacement, a semi-retired agent named Raglin, is… a bit milquetoast. He’s okay, and he’s given some interesting backstory in his final episode, but he’s no Vinnie.

Once again sporting a functional leg, Vinnie returns, and my favorite arc other than Steelgrave follows. 

In the Dead Dog arc, Vinnie has to pose as a music producer, because the OCB traded an airplane for a music label. It’s the dumbest, most fantastic plot device of all time, and brings me incalculable joy. I literally made Dead Dog t-shirts because I love this stupid fake music label owned by a fictional government agency so much. 

The Dead Dog arc sees Vinnie at his happiest (the poor man really, really just wants to quit undercover work and stop being involved with Murder Organizations), and the crime he’s investigating is… wait for it… bootleg CDs. You would think this would be a ridiculously boring premise for an investigation, but the Dead Dog arc has Tim Curry, Debbie Harry, Glenn Frey, and Patty D’Arbanville playing a cadre of unhinged music industry moguls all attempting to stab each other in the back, and it is exactly as chaotic as you would expect based on that cast. This arc also had a bunch of original music produced for it, which is extremely fucking cool, except that then the studio lost the rights to the music it created and this arc became inaccessible and unwatchable except through circulating the tapes, so to speak, of early 90’s TV rips. (The irony is not lost on me that the arc about the Evils of Piracy is the arc that one must pirate.) Miraculously, in the last year, Wiseguy’s rights have been renegotiated, and the newest sets of the show have Dead Dog restored. Accessibility via streaming is still a bit of a mixed bag— the episodes were streaming on Tubi and Youtube briefly, but now appear to have been taken down again.

After his turn as a surprisingly successful music producer, Vinnie returns to his roots: the mob. In the Mob Wars/Trash Wars arc, Vinnie unintentionally becomes the temporary leader of the local mafia commission (I will not spoil how.) The OCB wants to use this as an opportunity to take down the entire organization from the inside out, and Vinnie must deal with mafia backstabbing, pressure from Frank and the OCB, and surprisingly personal stakes. It’s an unspectacular but solid arc that regrounds the series, and the interpersonal aspects of the story— and its examination of fathers and sons and generational inheritance of social rules and expectations— are excellent. The Mafia Wars storyline won’t blow your pants off, but it’s thoughtful and well-executed and reminds us of who Vinnie is and where he came from.

What follows is another of my favorite arcs, referred to as the DC or Counterfeit Yen arc, but perhaps better described as the Mr. Terranova Goes to Washington arc. Vinnie is summoned by the federal government to investigate counterfeiting, and thus unfolds a multinational conspiracy that ties back to the Profitt arc. Much like the White Supremacy arc, this arc is distressingly current— Vinnie is a patsy for a group of corrupt republican senators who want to destabilize the currency of a perceived East Asian economic rival. It’s Yen here, but all you’d need to do to bring this arc into 2023 is swap out references to Japan for China, because the American government has changed very little from the 80’s and has to be awful about some country somewhere or, I don’t know, a bunch of horrible old racist politicians will shit themselves. Vinnie enters talking like Jimmy Stewart, and leaves with one more thing to be crushed and disillusioned about. We get some riveting and stomach-churning courtroom drama, the bad guy turns out to be capitalism all along, and Frank threatens to shoot a Howard Hughes stand-in on a ski lift.

And then somehow we end up in Twin Peaks. The Lynchboro arc predates Twin Peaks by a whopping two months, indicating a total coincidence of premise similarities, but it does take place in a corrupt rural Pacific Northwest town unduly influenced by one large family/company, wherein an outsider has to investigate a tangled conspiracy and deal with strange townsfolk and some spooky happenings. There’s no way either show could’ve plagiarized the other— they were assuredly written and in production at the same time— but it is deeply bizarre. In the Lynchboro arc, Vinnie goes undercover as a local beat cop, and finds himself faced with both a serial killer and a land-rights and building-contracts espionage plot. He also has to deal with Mark Volchek, the ostensible “owner” of the town, and his eccentricity and decreasing grip on reality. Roger returns, and Vinnie must finally confront the enormity of his trauma. One major character is literally brought back from the edge of death by another character’s crushing love for them, expressed via church bells. It doesn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, but it doesn’t not, either.

And then Ken Wahl quit.

Season Four begins with a deeply depressed, heavily bearded Frank struggling to find the will to live after Vinnie has disappeared. (I don’t think I’m really at risk of spoiling anything serious by saying that we are “supposed” to think Vinnie is permanently gone, but that there are a huge number of blatantly spotlighted contradictions in that story. Wahl left on decent terms, and I firmly believe the Wiseguy staff was expecting to eventually win him back to the show and have his absence turn out to be a ruse. Unfortunately, Wiseguy got cancelled before this could happen.) Frank spends the first (and only complete) arc of this season investigating his partner’s disappearance, eventually working with the supposedly-corrupt DA who helped establish Vinnie’s cover back before Season One. 

It’s not an uncommon opinion to say, ‘hey, just skip S4’— and honestly, if you chose to watch S1-3, you’d have consumed a wonderful story with a reasonably coherent ending. But I don’t actually hate Season Four. The “new Vinnie—” Michael Santana, played by pretty-boy Scarface alum Stephen Bauer— is exceptionally likeable, and he brings with him a new set of characters who are also quite compelling. Furthermore, if you’re a Frank fan, he really gets the spotlight in this season, and if you’re a Frank/Vinnie fan, Vinnie may not be around, but Frank’s despair is really fucking something else. It’s almost worth it just to see him lie to the FBI and tell them he “never crossed the line” of professionalism with Vinnie.

Unfortunately, the next arc sets up something really compelling and unique, but it’s only 3 (unaired on TV) episodes, and ends on a complete cliffhanger, because the show was unceremoniously cancelled. After his niece is shot in the midst of teenage gang violence, Michael teams up with Billy Dee Lando Calrissian Fucking Williams to investigate red-lining and racist underfunding of schools. Oliver Stone shows up in the last like, ten minutes of the last episode?? I would be all over this storyline if it wasn’t just dropped like a moldy tomato, but I guess that’s what fanfiction is for. It’s not how Wiseguy deserved to go out, but hey, it was really aiming for the stars even as the plug got pulled.

Oh, and if anyone tells you there’s a 1996 TV movie, no, there isn’t.* 

(*The movie is so deeply mediocre that it’s worse than any of the controversy surrounding Season Four. It essentially retcons all of S4 and, frankly, really the last few episodes of S3, and presents a bland, uninspired “getting the gang back together” story that retreads thematic materials from the show without saying anything new. Vinnie has apparently been doing wiretapping for 6 years, which is completely at odds with everything we know about his character, and he and Frank are treated as “dinosaurs” that the OCB doesn’t know what to do with, and yet they are also simultaneously the only ones who can take care of a nearly-kidnapped child. It’s rushed, it’s emotionally hollow, the actors are phoning it in, and it ignores all of the character development from the series in a way that renders its plot nearly nonsensical. Furthermore, Ken Wahl had been in a seriously disabling motorcycle accident a few years before, so his apparent discomfort and stiffness throughout the film is because he’s genuinely in significant pain. Don’t watch the movie. You can always write fix-it fic for how Vinnie manages to come back after Season Four. It’s much harder to write fix-it fic for boring character assassination written by the 'due-process-is-for-pussies-and-torture-works' 24 guy.)

One of the other delightful things about Wiseguy is that Vinnie is both a big softie and yet is also saddled with a bizarre sort of erotic smolder, and therefore he has ridiculous chemistry with basically half the cast of the show. Vinnie very much seems a guy like you could say some blandly nice things to and buy him dinner, and you’d wake up, exhausted and satisfied, the next morning to him cooking breakfast. You’d think, wow, this guy is so thoughtful, he must be the one— and then you’d turn your head and he’d have immediately been seduced by the next schmuck down the line. He’s a good boy, but his “acceptable romantic target” sensors are so wildly mistuned as to render him, affectionately, a tragic slut. Will he end up with a mobster? One of a number of widows? His boss? No one knows but god.

Vinnie is also heavily bi-coded— his relationship with Sonny is almost explicitly romantic, he calls out Roger for homophobia (in 1989), one of his old friend asks if the reason he’s not married is because he ‘likes boys,’ and he doesn’t say no, and he has a borderline I-love-you moment with Frank. The boy just wants someone to love him, goddammit. 

I’m also really not kidding about Vinnie and Frank developing into the emotional core of the series. They live together for a period of time. They both imply they can’t live without the other. They go shopping for Dan’s birthday together. They pick up Frank’s ailing father from the nursing home together. Frank picks out Vinnie’s tie.

You pick at the plate of spaghetti that appeared in front of you, unsure of either its provenance or why it came after dessert. It’s the best spaghetti you’ve ever had, and that frightens you, somehow. 

I lean in close to whisper to you about crime. You note that at some point I changed into a pinstriped suit. You don’t remember me changing, or even getting up— you console yourself with the notion that maybe I’d been wearing it from the start, even though you know that isn’t true.

So, the thing about Wiseguy is— well— it’s more available than it used to be. The whole series was recently released on blu-ray, and both that set and the most recent DVD sets actually have every episode, a change from the previous releases. As of August 2023, all of the series except Dead Dog is available, legally, on Youtube. This is a vast improvement from even two or three years ago, when multiple episodes weren’t available through any means but blurry, VHS-tracking-laden downloads of TV rips. 

Unfortunately, the most recent renegotiation of the series home video and streaming rights still failed on the music rights front. Dead Dog has been spared the hammer, but there are still places where the series has gaps. Notably, there’s an episode (Stairway to Heaven) where Frank murders a jukebox, and looks completely fucking insane, because the original (thematically meaningful) music the jukebox was playing was replaced with generic elevator music. Worse, the final episode of the Steelgrave arc (No One Gets Out of Here Alive) is missing two musical cues: in one instance, Sonny himself is singing, in a fit of mania, and the footage has straight up been cut from the episode because they couldn’t get the rights to The Young Rascals’ Good Lovin’.  Equally egregious, The Moody Blues’ Nights in White Satin, which originally played over nearly a minute of sustained, silent eye contact between Sonny and Vinnie— has been replaced with the Wiseguy opening theme. It renders a scene which should be quite clearly devastating and unsubtly romantic instead utterly awkward and bizarre. It’s hard to demonstrate just how jarring the change is unless you’ve seen the scene, but suffice to say that everyone I know who has seen both versions— in either order— has expressed horror and bafflement at the substitution. 

Which is to say: there’s a couple of episodes of Wiseguy you’re probably going to want to locate those shitty old TV rips of. It’s worth it, even if it seems like it wouldn’t be.

I place my hand over yours. You jump a little. I have a number of large, dark-stoned signet rings, and my hand is strangely cold. 

I make you an offer you can’t refuse.

You’re going to watch Wiseguy. 

[did-someone-say-aliens]

Pinned Post 2025 !!!

Hello ! I’m Artie :) I realized I hadn’t updated my pinned post since 2023 SO I decided that I’m gonna make a new one every year!

I’m autistic, I’m an INFJ 4w5, I’m aromantic and asexual, and I am NOT an alien in disguise trying to abduct your pets! Glad we’ve made that clear !!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not talk to me or interact with me or be near me IF you are homophobic, transphobic, a TERF, support Israel, a proshipper, or a “MAP” (pedophile) please thanks

ON THAT TOPIC. I can’t donate to gaza campaigns or gofundme’s at all because I have. No money. But I of course of course will reblog and link gofundme’s!

Pronounz:

She/he/they/it/Bug/clown/alien/snail/rain/worm/xe/xyr/xir/ze/ne/ nym/phey/phem/ve/vem/ver/vim/ce/cir /moth/ghost

I collect pronouns. I just stash ‘em in there yknow. Like marbles. “Normal” society has made me tone down all the emoji pronouns tho

Alt Accounts & Other Socialz

@kinnie-central: I make custom kinnie bingo’s :)

@costasella: Warning I barely post there. It was supposed to be an rp account for my pressure oc!!

@cr-polls: I post here the most, I make cookie run polls :D for every game.

Itch.io

Bluesky

Fandoms I’m in + Roleplay info under the cut because those lists are way way way too long

Fandoms:

2001: A Space Odyssey 

Animal Jam

Aggretsuko

Animal Crossing

Ace Attorney

Avatar the Last Airbender

Alice In Wonderland (OG, Tim Burton, and American Mcgee)

Amphibia

Adventure Time

Attack On Titan

Arcane

Bungo Stray Dogs

Bigtop Burger

Battle For Dream Island

Bendy and the Ink Machine

Bluey

Blue’s Clues

Battle Kitty

Baldi’s Basics

Cookie Run (Kingdom, Ovenbreak)

Crowscare

Critterspace

Captain Underpants

Corpse Factory

Cuphead

Dayshift At Freddy’s

Danganronpa (1, sdr2, V3)

Deltarune

Doors

Doki Doki Literature Club

Does Dungeons & Dragons count?? 

Dogman

Dandy’s World

Death Note

Dialtown

Demon Slayer

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared

Death and Taxes

Decora Girlz

DC (mostly batman and DC Superhero Girls)

Electric Dreams

Ensemble Stars

ENA (OG and Dream BBQ)

Ever After High

Extraordinary Attorney Woo

Five Nights At Freddy’s

Fundamental Paper Education

Friday Night Funkin’

Ghost and Pals

Gorillaz

Good Omens

Genshin Impact

Gravity Falls

Gavril

Homestuck

Happy Tree Friends

Hooky

Hello Puppets

It’s Not Me, It’s My Basement

Inside Job

Inanimate Insanity

Invader Zim

Indigo Park

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

John Doe

Kirby

K-On!

Lalaloopsy

Littlest Pet Shop

Lego Batman

Lord of the Rings

Little Nightmares

Lollipop Chainsaw

Leftovers

Legend of Zelda

Magical Girl Site

Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls

My Little Pony

Minecraft/Minecraft Story Mode

Marionetta

My Hero Academia

Monster High (All gens!!!)

Mouthwashing

Mad Father

Milk Inside a Bag of Milk

Mario

Night in the Woods

Ninjago

Nimona

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Needy Streamer Overload

Ninja Turtles (Mostly Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

Omori

Over the Garden Wall

OK K.O

Octonauts

Ouran Highschool Host Club

Project Sekai

Pressure (Roblox)

Puppet Combo (All games)

Parappa The Rapper

Powerpuff Girls

Pepper’s Playhouse

Popee The Performer

Pokemon

Portal 1 & 2

Pete The Cat

Regretevator

Raggedy Ann

Ruby Gloom

Resident Evil

Rhythm Heaven

Regular Show

Splatoon

Secret Alliance

Star Trek

Sesame Street

Stardew Valley

Strawberry Shortcake 

Star Vs The Forces of Evil

Sailor Moon

She-Ra 

Spooky Month

Sanrio

Spiderverse

Studio Ghibli

Serial Experiments Lain

Sonic the Hedgehog

Skullgirls

Steven Universe

Sally Face

Smile for Me

Shopkins

Steve Saga

SCP

Tangled The Series

The Sun and Moon Show

The Future Diary

The Muppets

The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

Twelve Forever

The Thief and the Cobbler

The Walten Files

The Mandela Catalogue

The Magnus Archives

The Lego Movie

Tattletail

Toilet Bound Hanako Kun

Trolls

The Stanley Parable

The Case Study of Vanitas

The Owl House

The Amazing World of Gumball

Transformers

The Amazing Digital Circus

Undertale/Underverse/Undertale AUs

UM Jammer Lammy

Unikitty

Vocaloid

Varian and the Seven Kingdoms

Watamote

Wander over Yonder

Warrior Cats

Welcome Home

Wordgirl

Yuppie Psycho

Yandere Simulator

Your Turn to Die

Yo Gabba Gabba

Fandoms and Characters I’ll Roleplay:

Roleplays: OPEN!!

ROLEPLAY RULES!!!

No NSFW, non-con, or anything like that, not even normal shippy romance stuff. So so so uncomfortable 😭 To be clear, I don’t care if your character has a relationship with someone else or whatever whatever, AS LONG AS IT’S NOT WITH ME WE’RE OKAY.

Don’t try to control/dictate what my character is doing for me, it makes me sad 😔

I get demotivated really easily so please keep that in mind when we do stuff, I also have SUPER SUPER BAD SOCIAL ANXIETY so please be patient with me :,)

Don’t askbox roleplay please!! I don’t like to roleplay publicly it’s really nerve wracking and embarrassing, I’ll totally do it in DM’s though!!

More to be added!

FANDOMS + CHARACTERS I RP

Ace Attorney: Edgeworth, Alita Tiala, Apollo Justice

Amphibia: Marcy Wu, Dr. Jan, The Core/Darcy

Adventure Time: Magic Betty, BMO, Fern, Ice Finn

Bungo Stray Dogs: Dazai, Edgar 

Cookie Run: Pure Vanilla Cookie, Affogato Cookie, Mystic Flour Cookie, Truthless Recluse, Whipped Cream Cookie

Dayshift At Freddy’s: Dee

Danganronpa (1, sdr2, V3): Kokichi Oma (Pregame, Ingame, or Postgame), Mikan Tsumiki

Doki Doki Literature Club: Yuri, Sayori

Dandy’s World: Razzle & Dazzle, Astro, Twisted Glisten

Death Note: Near, Teru Mikami

Five Nights At Freddy’s: Puppet/Charlie, Sun/Eclipse

Ghost and Pals: Christopher, Creative Piko “Tock”, Epta

Inside Job: Reagan

Lalaloopsy: Rosy Bumps N Bruises, Haley Galaxy

Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls: Mars, Uranus, The Moon

My Little Pony: Fluttershy, Starlight Glimmer, Sci-Twi

Minecraft/Minecraft Story Mode: Lukas, Ivor

Monster High: Twyla (g3), Ghoulia (g1)

ROTTMNT: Donnie

Omori: Sunny, Basil

Popee The Performer: Eepop

Portal: Glados, Caroline, Curiosity Core, Space Core

Ruby Gloom: Misery

Star Vs The Forces of Evil: Eclipsa, Celena

Sonic the Hedgehog: Shadow

Steven Universe: Peridot, Rainbow Quartz 2.0

Sally Face: Sal, Ashley

Smile for Me: Kamal, Dr. Habit

Tangled The Series/VAT7K: Varian, Nuru, Ulla

The Magnus Archive: Michael (Pre-spiral or spiral)

Undertale/Underverse/Undertale AUs/Deltarune: Dream Sans

Vocaloid: Fukase, Yowane Haku

Welcome Home: Wally, Sally

[glitchyvoice]

Hello everyone!! This is gonna be the text dump version of my intro post, this'll be updated once I have the carrd ready.

Looking for my post-game cotl references?? Don't worry!! You can still find those here

Shamura's temple refs here

And if there's other references you need, feel free to ask!! More than likely I'll go hunt them down for you.

My name is Glitchy. I am 20, genderfaun, polyam, and aroace. (sex repulsed.) I use any pronouns except for she/her. (including neopronouns!! go wild!!)

I am a British American artist and writer living in the US. Commissions are not currently open, (except for friends n moots) but I plan on opening them soon. (In the meantime, if you'd like to donate, here's my KoFi!!)

The fic I'm currently working on is Fate's Twine!! Feel free to check it out if you're into cotl!! (I'll add more info about it on the carrd.)

Note - If you're (somehow) here from Scattered Stardust, it's on hiatus currently. Not stopping it, but it might be a while before I get back to writing it.

Tags:

#glitchyvoices his (dumb) thoughts - text post/ramble tag

#glitchydoodles - art tag!! i put all my art here

#glitchycritters - oc posts

#glitchyanswers - for when i answer asks

#glitchysaves - my save tag. just a random collection of refs for personal use and posts i found funny enough to save

Link to my Twitch

Boundaries and fandom lists under the cut!!

MY BOUNDARIES

Proshippers, just block me. If you interact I’ll just block you and move on with my day, thanks.

Do NOT repost my art and claim it as your own. (Reblogging is NOT reposting!! Reblogging is appreciated and helps support me!! Reblog as you wish!!)

Do NOT put my art or fics through any ai programs. (Yes, this includes character ai!!) I don’t care what it’s for, I don’t want ai scraping my stuff.

You may use my art as a pfp as long as the account you are using it for is non-profit and you credit me.

Asks and DMs are open! Send whatever you like, with a few boundaries:

NO NSFW content. I am sex repulsed and that stuff makes me uncomfortable. If you send it, I will block you. Suggestive content and jokes are okay. (If you are an adult, obviously.) Not sure if something is suggestive or NSFW? Ask me! I won’t be upset with you for just asking, I promise.

Don’t advertise in my asks or dms, that’s weird.

If I don’t know you and you send me a link, I will assume you are a bot and block you.

Don’t ask me to proofread my fics, the answer will always be no.

Don’t come into my asks or dms critiquing my art or writing. If I don’t specifically say the words “Hey can you critique this?” then I don’t want it.

Want to tag me in a post you think I’ll like? Go for it! Just, again, don’t tag me in anything NSFW, thanks.

Want to make art of my designs or characters? Go for it! Please tag me so I can see it! (You’ll genuinely make like my entire week)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MY FANDOMS

This is mostly just a dump list of anything I can remember I like. I'll add to it as I remember more.

CURRENT MAIN HYPERFIXATION: COTL

Other fandoms I enjoy:

Animal Crossing

Billie Bust Up

Cookie Run Kingdom

Dayshift at Freddy's

Detroit: Become Human

Don't Starve/Don't Starve Together

ENA

Five Nights At Freddy's

Fran Bow

Generation Loss

Hollow Knight

Homestuck

Honkai: Star Rail

Indigo Park

Inscryption

JRWI Riptide [No spoilers, please!]

Kagerou Project

Life is Strange

Little Misfortune

Little Nightmares

Madoka Magica

Night In The Woods

Omori

Ooblets

Pokemon

Portal

Sally Face

Sky COTL

Splatoon [No Side Order spoilers, please]

Stardew Valley

The Amazing Digital Circus

The Bunny Graveyard

The Legend of Zelda

The Stanley Parable

The Walten Files

Undertale/Deltarune

Welcome Home

Your Turn to Die

Into something that’s not on this list? Shoot me an ask about it! I love hearing about new fandoms and just listening to people talk about their interests in general. More than likely I’ll end up looking into it. (Or I'll already know about it and just forgot to add it to the list)

[0ffthel1ne]

Info post!

Howdy, I'm Offtheline! (another nickname is CatKot, so u can call me Kot for short or idk, call me whatever u like)

Kind of an artist, a little bit of a writer. If u wanna use my art for a pfp I'll be honoured(‼️) but credits would be much appreciated!

I'm not on very good terms with English so . . .  '͡•_'͡•'

Also I'm new to tumblr so I might not know a lot of things (I'm scared to interact with people help)

I'm multifandom! All my fandoms I could remember are under the cut if you're interested (and I'm very inconsistent so please don't follow if you're only expecting smth particular🙏)

I also have my own OC's and probably will post smth with them too sometimes!

Btw I have a telegram channel in case you speak russian and are interested👀 : @.OffTheLineee (I'm actually more active there but I didn't tell you this.)

Tags to organize my blog (?) :

#my art

#sketches

#doodles

#cat!!

#reblogs

#important stuff

My fandoms:

* -- ik that one!

☆ -- kinda active fandom?

★ -- OOHHH THIS!!! LOVE IT!!

□ -- still haven't completed it :(

★ Undertale [+AU]

□ Deltarune

□ Undertale Yellow

★ Underworld Office

□ Charlie in Underworld

★ Gravity Falls

★ Spooky Month

★ ENA

★ ENA Dream BBQ

* Sky: Children of the Light

☆ Five Nights At Freddy's

* The Walten Files

* Bendy And The Ink Machine

* Baldi's Basics

★ The Stanley Parable

* Doki Doki Literature Club

* Sally Face

□ Solar Opposites

* Little Misfortune

* Tiny Bunny

★ Stardew Valley

☆ Metal Family

* Дух моей общаги

★ Detroit: Become Human

* Atomic Heart

* Helltaker

* Awaria

* Hotel Hazbin

* Helluva Boss

* Unicorn Wars

★ The Amazing Digital Circus

★ The Darly Boxman Show

★ Just Shapes and Beats

* Minecraft Story Mode

★ БЕСИТ!

* И.Н.М.Т.

★ Wander Over Yonder

★ Villainous

* MazM: Jekyll and Hyde

★ Mouthwashing

* Палитра Смерти

★ Homicipher

* Identity V

□ Dead Cells

□ Ultrakill

□★ The Property of Hate

★ Dialtown: Phone Dating Sim

* Coffee Talk

★ Spider-Man: ITSV, ATSV

* Sherlock [2010]

□ House M.D.

* Fight Club

* Squid Game

My kin list

(I wont explain any of these):

Will Wood [i can add real people here yes?]

Asriel Dreemurr;

Grillby [Undertale]

Ralsei;

K_K [Deltarune]

Paper Jam Dipper [Gravity Falls]

Kevin;

Robert [Spooky Month]

Ena [ENA]

Coral Glasses [ENA Dream BBQ]

Yuri [DDLC]

Gizmo [Sally Face]

Terry [Solar Opposites]

Harvey [Stardew Valley]

Душнов Олегсей/Олежа [ДМО]

Stolas [Helluva Boss]

Ragatha [TADC]

Mimlimim [Darly Boxman Show]

Док/Дима(?) [БЕСИТ!]

Bruno Madrigal [Encanto]

Dr. Flug [Villainous]

Seer/Eli Clark [Identity V]

Tinker;

Magnus [TPoH]

Randy Jade;

Oliver Swift;

Tango [Dialtown]

Johnathon Ohnn/Spot [Spider-Man: ATSV]

James Evan Wilson [House M.D.]

[jomiddlemarch]

A handshake is available upon request 

“There used to be offices. Actual fucking offices, doors, windows, generic black and white landscape photography in a black frame because they wanted to be a little edgy, architect-school-wannabes,” Nina announced at the water cooler, which had been moved out of what was nominally the kitchen-slash-lounge, so that it was less appealing to stand around and chat. They weren’t allowed to bring in their own water bottles however, because their bathroom breaks were strictly regulated and a full Stanley on even 50% renal function equaled more time away from their screens than they were allocated. The water cooler had tiny paper cones to drink out of and if you didn’t swallow the whole thing right away, the paper would start to turn into mush in your hand. It wasn’t compostable though, because collecting compost would take time out of someone’s schedule that didn’t generate income.

“Really?” Alina said, keeping her voice lower than Nina’s. Nina was a veteran, relatively speaking, having survived the layoffs in ’18,’19, and ’22 and she wore Grimace purple Converse to the office on casual Fridays. Alina was approaching the end of her 90-day probation and needed to keep the job for the benefits more than anything else. The pay wasn’t great but there was vision and dental.

“Yeah, that was before all this cubicle shit,” Nina said. “If you don’t believe me, ask Gen. She remembers—”

“They said it would build morale. We’d all be interacting and sparking ideas or some nonsense like that. Like they want us to have ideas,” Gen offered. She was a bit more circumspect than Nina, which wasn’t saying all that much. She’d been assigned to show Alina the ropes the first week and fortunately, they were becoming friends. Well, work-friends. “They also took out all the vending machines except the one on the 24th floor.”

“The one with the ancient turkey sandwiches?” Alina said.

“Doesn’t ever need to be restocked, does it?” Nina said.

“We’re all just drones now,” Gen said. “Look what they did to David—”

“He was lucky he didn’t get fired for finding that loophole,” Nina said. Gen could get ranty about David, whom she’d had a crush on for like a year and who barely spoke to her, even though everyone could tell he was interested. “It’s worse what happened to Alex. That’s an absolute fucking nightmare.”

“What happened to him?” Alina asked. She’d seen Alex around, a tall, impassive dark-haired man with a close-cropped beard in the standard corporate uniform—charcoal or navy pants, button-down, no tie, cross-body nylon satchel—though she’d thought if he ever smiled, he’d probably be quite the looker. Not that he’d ever look at her, just one step up from a temp. 

“You know he basically built the place from the ground up, but I guess he was over-leveraged, there’s some rumor about his mother being in a crazy expensive assisted living with like a private nurse, but he doesn’t talk about her. After the takeover, he couldn’t afford to leave or he wouldn’t, there’s no real agreement on that part, and anyway, they took his top floor corner office and stuck him on 11. He’s got a door but no windows, can’t even keep a goddamn aspidistra alive in there,” Nina said. 

“Shit, there’s tattle-tail Tatiana and she’d coming over,” Gen muttered, then plastered a broad and clearly fake smile on her face, ducking her chin slightly to make her pony-tail bounce. “Hi, Tatiana!”

“Your reports ready to be filed?” Tatiana, the ostensible division supervisor, said. She looked lacquered, like she’d been manicured head-to-toe and left under the UV drying lamp a little too long. She didn’t smile but made some kind of smile-adjacent expression that showed her teeth. She must have the high dental plan because she clearly had caps.

“Just about,” Nina said. “Talk to you later, Alina—”

“After work,” Tatiana said. Nina nodded, then winked at Alina when Tatiana turned to squint across the floor at the cubicle Matt sat in, his blond head towering over the felted-composite wall.

“Yes, I was just going,” Alina said, though Tatiana had lost interest and had pivoted, obviously intending to walk over to Matt and find some reason to interrupt him. He’d play up his Norwegian, acting like he didn’t understand her, when Alina knew he was completely fluent in English, but he’d figured out it was the easiest way to get Tatiana to move along without getting saddled with additional work.

“Alina, maybe you can do me a solid? I left a folder on 11,” Nina said. “Can you run it down for me before you finish your break—”

“Break’s only 10 minutes. You better hurry,” Tatiana said.

“Of course, not a problem. Teamwork makes the dreamwork, right?” Alina replied as cheerful as a cartoon princess slogging it out in the forest with gnomes or dwarves or a nosey bunch of rodents, aware it was Day 84 and that she needed Tatiana to sign off on her or at least not have a reason to dump her. She was also aware that Nina had no folder, but that there was an office supply closet with the folders they used on their floor and that it was right next to the only office on 11. The office that evidently belonged to Alex, former CEO, now cooped up with a withering aspidistra. He could maybe use a cup of what passed for coffee in what passed for a general collegial friendliness, if you discounted that they worked in a cold steel skyscraper engaged in the soulless corporate grind.

For @iamstartraveller776 who suggested Evil Universe Trope "no coffee-shops, bakeries, florists...only cold steel skyscrapers in the soulless corporate grind" and with thanks to Severance for making it mainstream :)